ΤΗΕ ΟΖΜΑΝΔΙΑ ΧΙΡΧΛΕ

Introduction

By JAAK WASSMUTH

This book was shared with me by Jaak in early 2020 soon after we met for the first time. Jaak wrote most of the content around 2006 from my understanding. He told me the ideas were floating around his mind for a while and when he got the energy to start the book he got most of the words out in just a few months.

My intention with sharing it here is to make it available and to transparently share my edits as separate post. I want to eventually have a screenplay created from his work as he asked me.

Enjoy!

Oannes The Fish Man

The following descriptions are taken from a history of Mesopotamia written in the third century BC by Berossus, a Babylonian priest whose work survives only in fragments and was recorded by later Greek historians.
At Babylon there was (in these times) a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldaea, and lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field. In the first year there appeared, from that part of the Erythraean sea which borders upon Babylonia, an animal destitute of reason [sic], by name Oannes, whose whole body (according to the account of Apollodorus) was that of a fish, that under the fish's head he had another head, with feet also below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish's tail. His voice too, and language, was articulated and human, and a representation of him is preserved even to this day.
This Being was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed them how to collect the fruits; in short, he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and humanize their lives. From that time, nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun had set, this Being Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep; for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals like Oannes.

ozmandias

Percy Bysshe Shelly

I met a traveler from an antique land
who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lays, whose frown,
and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozmandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains, Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

”Any rock can tell you,“

Mr. Brown had arrived on this planet at the end of the fifteenth century. He was dropped off in what is called the Pacific Ocean near an island that came to be known as Suva in the New Hebrides Islands. Cortez was a child playing war with his friends in Spain and “killing Moors.” Cervantes and Shakespeare were still 65 years away from being born and, although these two humans were the greatest literary minds of their time, they never met each other. They died on the same day. A haunting fact! Mr. Brown would find out about them years after they’d come and gone and would become a big fan of Shakespere’s theatrics.

Mr. Brown came here to help impart a bit of terrestrial history with the aid of a coin. The coin was made of Orichalcum, a compound made of aluminum and copper and was used as legal tender on Earth thousands of years ago in a forgotten land; at least it was forgotten on Earth. On one side of the coin was two faces of the same man; one old and one young as if he was looking at the old world in his youth and a new world at the end of his life. The other side of the coin was inscribed with the words, “ The circle returns.”

He also came as a monitor to record the progress of that great Izarian experiment; Cro-Magnon/Izarian miscegenation. His trip here was to be purely observational. He was to make limited contact with the inhabitants of this world and transmit his observations, nothing more!

Time was moving much faster for Mr. Brown this close to the sun. It just seemed to fly by so to speak. He only had a short 500 years here till his planned rendezvous around the year 2000. There was so much adventure on this planet; it was so primitive and wild!

There is a blurry line between what we think of as human and his species. Mr. B was half fish, that is to say, amphibious; his natural domain being both water as well as land. The vast seas of Earth are what attracted his predecessors to this planet. What a playground Earth was for the Izarians! Mr. Brown had been at sea on Earth for over 450 years and half of that he’d actually been in the sea. He’d watched the human race plod along in their antiquated vessels across great bodies of water and witnessed their slowly expanding technologies with interest, if not amusement.

His predecessors had a much higher visibility while visiting here. They showed themselves to the masses and did not dispel the notion that they were gods. As consequence they were deified by this tiny island of creatures; earthlings.
The earthlings made statues made of them and temples for worship. All that remains of that time are shards with no one left to tell their story.
Archaeologists managed to discover a statue of Oannes; a subordinate on his mission. All memory of the real heavies was destroyed or their true identity deformed. The history of earthling existants is clouded by their ignorance and subsequent mis-interpretation.

during humans invention of their phobic religions till now the memory of their existence is that of fairy tales and imaginary characters found in children’s bed time stories;myths. Indeed, the feminine counterpart of this fish story is near forgotten while the male has managed to remain in the cult that has emerged from these earthlings.
While the male dominated recollection of history places Oannes as the Fish God of Assyria the fact of the matter was the deity came in a more feminine reinment. There was Oannes but he had Atargartis and she was the Mother of human civilization as far as the Assyrians were concerned. There is little known about Atargartis but Oannes on the other hand managed to survive the destructive nature of mankind in the form of several statues that were found by Sir Layard and others. He and his fellow travelers were always depicted in the same way; dressed in the fashion of the day with two arms and two legs but that’s where the similarity ended. Oannes also had a dorsal fin and a large fishes tail. This creature appears in several places throughout the middle east and Asia Minor, always a bit different but with the same distinctive characteristics. These characteristics may have been largely the result of these beings habit of spending the night in the sea because Mr. Brown had all the outward appearances of a human being!

As the age of rigid morality reared it’s dirty little head, it rendered the female human form as a hideous, to be regarded as animal, to be contained, to be forced into submission. Now the recollections of these amphibious matriarchs was transformed to be manifest as fairies and seductive dangers, not to be trusted. Dea Syria was one such Goddess. She was one of Celtic origin, the same Celtics who had managed to turn up in North America thousands of years before Lief Ericson or any of his crowd. She had a cult who’s memory has been destroyed along with many other ancient dietys. The Greeks called their version Aphrodite. She is the most famous of Mermaids or Sea Goddesses. She appeared as a human, transferring her fishy attributes to her escorts, the Tritons. The Philistines had their own amphibious sea goddess and her name was Decerto. There were many other female sea goddesses; in Japanese Ningyo, Polynesian Vatea, Cornish Merrymaids, the Irish Merrows, the Scandinavian Havmand, the Norwegian Haufine, and so on. Every country has their Nixies and Melusine, their Rusalka and Vodyany. Then as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone.

The reason they sent Mr. Brown was, since the experiment had gone so badly on earth, the Izarians didn’t see the need to expend too much energy on something that may not come to fruition. They had given quite a bit to these beings already but the humans seemed to be in some sort of hedonistic de-evolutionary inclination. The Izarians wanted to compile more information before they made a decision about what to do next. The Izarians had long since “stepped out of the picture,” so to speak and were now just watching the progress of their experiment.

The evolution of this geologic potpourri called Earth is one that has captured the imagination and intellect of humankind, perhaps others! With their propensity for unraveling mysteries and thinking themselves fairly clever; humankind, in their very short existence as a group has tried to make sense of the history of the geologic life of this planet. Armed with their collected information they’ve even tried to predict what might happen next. With their findings, they’ve made outrageous assumptions of what the lives of these prehistoric might have been. At the time that this book concerns itself with, human history accounts for 6,000 to 10,000 years out of 65,800, years of human existence. Bit of a gap! This gap is called pre-history. After excavating mountains of artifacts, labeling them and decerning their significance; these archaeologists draw conclusions as to what life was like during that time in the past. According to the currently accepted version, the present civilization was at the pinnacle of what human existence had come to be; (audacious and amazingly naive) like Ozmandius* dreamt, “King of kings...,” and what they know of him could hardly fill a match book. Still, Ozmandius and the people that lived in his time are here today and will be tomorrow.

Mr. Brown knew that souls are melded into the very fabric of the universe. Time is measured or related to in a manner relative to the lifetime of that entity. Let’s say you are a rock. Your lifetime could be a mighty long time and time would move awfully slow. As a rock you would have centuries to ponder your navel, provided you had one and that’s what suited your fancy. You could be a May fly. Not much time for a May fly to ponder geologic time in the way a rock can! No! The May Fly has 7 days to live from the moment it’s born.. By the time a May Fly is two days old, its faced with death. This is not a life span that lends itself well to contemplation. They do have a connection though; Einstein proved that matter cannot be destroyed, just altered in form so it might be fun to put these two entities; May Fly’s and rocks together in a sort of matter stockpile. We’ll watch how they meld together; perhaps creating something interesting, say a bottle of Mescal or the paint on a NO SURFING sign, like some sort of geologic speedball; their previous existence may or may not be tangible in their new one; one never knows. Being omniscient, we have the luxury to observe what takes place when these two different entities collide so perhaps we’ll just leave them lying around on the beach and leave chance to do the dirty work. Chance is the great catch basin of the lazy omniscient. Much is left to the whim of chance. Even being omniscient; one must either choose between going to bed early or staying up late!
If Einstein was right, the spent carcass of this lifetime still has a chance to re-appear in some other form at some later date. There is just so much clay in this “ceramics department” and so it must be used over and over again; this year a pot, next year a cup, 80 or 90,000 years as river sediment and so on. At some point this stuff may take on a bit more sophisticated form but humans do not have the time to make these kinds of observations. Their perception of the world is quite narrow and so they are not aware of all that is transpiring round them.

People like Al Fwada. He’s drunk and he’s dreaming that he’s being blown to sea. He’s clutching hold of the mast and there’s a madman at the helm laughing hysterically! He’s got a death grip on the mast and he’s not letting go for anything! The ocean is a maelstrom of topless waves and the bottomless pit of the trough is a liquid terror. Al feels he’s being pulled and cannot seem to keep his grip. He’s sliding down the mast and he’s panicked that he might fall into the sea. Soon the mast he’s dreaming of is actually a street sign and he’s being arrested! The year is 1996 and the nearest vessel anything like what Al is dreaming about is about a week away and when Al first sees it he won’t recognize the connection anyway.

It doesn’t matter anyway because our hero is promptly handcuffed and carted off to jail, the one down town!. At this time in the development of human existence dreams are largely ignored as a sort of night time entertainment. There are a few that take these aberrations seriously but they are in the fringe of society and are written off as mystical fruitcakes...Al is not one of these baked goods He is quite complacent to call his re-occurring dreams, nightmares. I contend it’s a premonition loosened by the effects of Mescal on an otherwise lucid mind. That’s what the policia thought too! “12 hours in the DRUNK TANK pinche’ cabron!”
Years later the Policia would get to know Al quite well. He’d come to the surface when the chilongos (a Citizen of Mexico city) took the beach. Something about a graffiti artist leaving his credo: (ALMERA NO ALTO!) all over town. He was never arrested for the accusation because he disappeared when they began to change the town into a city. When he returned he’d become an eloquently outrageous drunk with lots’ of stories and “fun chips” and lots of drinking buddies. Occasionally he would find his way to the drunk tank. He’d drink all his friends under tables all over town and then end up at some bontanna (a place where they serve bits of food with their beer and tequila ) till the cops there got tired of this gringo’s (someone other than a Mexican, usually an American) outrageous behavior and would take him down town to sober up in the drunk tank! Officially his record with the local police read like a modern novella of the life Don Quiote and his trusty companion, Sancho Panza. A myriad of alcoholic substances and an equally colorful cast of lovers found their way to his lips; just like the sand that found itself stuck between his toes. Elixirs, and adventures, all were to be savored and the favorite was Mescal, but none of that had happened yet. This was just his first time “down town.”

After twelve hours of the Mexican sun in a roofless adobe jail cell Al’s thirst was beginning to grab his whole imagination. There were cold beers to be consulted and a cask of 25 year old mescal that would certainly have to be solicited for advise. Yes, it was hot and Al had sweated, but with the thought of the impending release, well his thoughts naturally drifted to Mescal. There was something about Mescal for Al. It was like some sort of lubricant for his dreams and whenever he had dreams he sort of lost track of the line between real and not real. Generally that’s when the problems began or at least when he “lost definition, “of the line between. Dreams and reality; a subject with great levity that must be addressed but first, lets press this button see what happens!

AHH MEXICO

Al moved to PE in 1992, before they put in the jetties and the harbor with it’s break water. Back then the waves were scaring the shit out of just about everybody and only the desperadoes and the adventurous types would end up there. There were cock fights and mid-night shoot outs. The town closed with the pouring of the last drink. Many proprietors never closed if there was one wallet in the place. There were months of holidays. They had St. Lunes which was a perfectly acceptable reason not to go to work on Monday or “Lunes”* in Spanish. There was Semana Santa or Gods’ Week and nothing gets done for two weeks. It is by far the Mexicans biggest holiday in fact all of Central America and there are celebrations all over the country. They had Dia de Annunciation, Dia de Mordia, “Saint” everything and anything. Each one of these special days rendered the countryside at a stand still. There were collectivos which is nothing more than a canvas covered pick-up truck with wooden bench seats. There were Tuesday mescalitos or barrochos; people who, when they get paid on Saturday, go out and get very drunk and stay that way till everybody else goes back to work. They find themselves, usually miles from home and the entire world seems to be frighteningly sober, while, at the same time, they’re so drunk that they’re using the ears of the person they’re talking to as visual reference points to locate that persons head, blearily attempting to focus through the fog of a three day drunk. That would be Tuesday in Mexico. The roads were all dirt then and traveled by everything but automobiles; goats, pigs, bulls, chickens, dogs, burros, Brahma’s, very large trucks, herds of horses, the occasional horse race, men with rifles and women with machetes. As the tourist dollar found it’s way to the community there were more and more taxis and a few of those would trek into the hillsides but that’s another story and has precious little to do with the main story other than it might be a bit of something, that, left to chance could make it’s way into the story, thanks to Einstein and geologic time.

All was well till the first surfer arrived. Puerto Escondido was just a tiny forgotten fishing village, it’s fame long past with the construction of Salina Cruz, the southern most Mexican harbor. The waves here are so consistently powerful and large that soon after one surfer found the spot, ten arrived, then one hundred. It wasn’t long before they and their money started to flow into the village and the chilongos saw the opportunity to make some tourist dollars. They were looking for new ways to attract tourist dollars. At the time, sixty percent of the Mexican gross National Product was related to tourism. The government built a small airport and a few of the bureaucrats flew into town to see what the tourist possibilities might be. The Magisterio (teachers’ house) was their first effort. It’s grim outcome diverted their interests to more placid accommodations; Hualutco and its Acapulco style seafront was the result and the Indians that lived in Hualutco were moved 30 kms inland to make room for the new chilongo tourist venture. Puerto Escondido continued to grow and prosper unencumbered. As a result of the surfer dollar, soon a bigger airport was built to accommodate jet travel and more people. The people came and the pesos rolled in. The Indians were getting richer and richer and had managed to keep most of the chilongos (citizen of Mexico City or D.F.) out of their town and out of their pockets.

The name of the town, Puerto Escondido, translated means “hidden port.” The secret of the place was kept for many years. When tourism took a foothold the Indians took the cue and began to make the place inviting. People the world over were looking for ways and places to escape. “The hidden port” sounded like a perfect place! They began to go there. They were looking for something or they were looking to forget something. It wasn’t an exodus. It was a trickle and then a stream. The town changed from a fishing village to a town. It was typical of the world and important for the economy being such a fragile thing. The economy is not matter but the manipulation of it. The changing of the area caused many things; Spanish was slowly but relentless replaced with Spanglish. Soon the Indian population was out numbered by gringos who brought their language which began to replace Spanish little by little.

The government made a play at the tourism industry in Puerto Escondido but the waves proved to be far too violent. They built a large hotel type building right on the beach. It was to be for the teachers of Mexico City to take vacations. There was great fanfare at the christening of the building and that first weekend the place was jam packed. That Friday night was all smiles! It was the start of a week long holiday on the Oaxacian coast! Within a week over a dozen people would loose their lives drowning in that tropical water, the sea being deceptively unfriendly!

Since that week of drowning the building had stood vacant. Occasionally a transient family would move into the building but they could never stay for very long. It wasn’t that the place was ridden with spirits or haunted or something like that. It wasn’t the fact that the roof leaked, the plumbing had rusted and the windows were all broken. It didn’t even have anything to do with the pack of dogs that had taken over the lobby, forcing you to climb up a ladder to get into the floor above! It was the whore house that was just next door! Sure, it was called a bontanna, but the policia didn’t frequent the place because they gave away tacos and salsa with their beer! Puta chingon cabron! (Not translatable)

Now a whore house in, say New York is usually a pretty low key affair; anything to avoid trouble with the law. A “bontanna” in Oaxaca (pronounced wa-hac-a) is an entirely different story. Where in New York the cops are paid to look the other way, making the occasional raid to keep up public appearances; in Oaxaca the policia own and operate! Neat! The ill fated teachers hostile, (La Magisterio), was right next to the biggest police sanctioned party within 20 kms. The parties would start at 11:00 PM with it’s UM PA music (Mexician style Polka music) blaring as loud as the equipment would go. Living at the Magisterio would have been sufferable for that racket but there was another aspect that was part of it’s proximity to the “bontanna.” With uncanny regularity one of the “bontanna’s waitresses” and one of their “uniformed clients” would repartee to the Magisterio for “a physical conversation.” This inevitable occurrence combined with the early morning gun fights that took place from time to time would soon drive the would be squatters away. Ultimately the building was ignored by all who lived near by and had become a testament to why the Chilongos (Mexico city citizens) were distrusted by the local people of Puerto Escondido and all of Oaxaca.

By 1992 the Chilongos had become very rich as a result of oil deposits that had been located all over Mexico. As was an integral part of the developed system, the ones who had money got more and more, whatever means, while the people who didn’t, didn’t! The Indians would be given land to live on and large groups of them would migrate to the location of this “land grab.” They would clear the land and build houses and roads. They would dig wells by hand and cultivate the land. After a time, when the land became useful as a result of their hard work the Chilongos, with the help of the government would take the land back for their own benefit. It had happened again and again and the Indians had gotten used to the idea. It was something they had grown up with and lived through before as had their fathers before them. When the Indians settled on Zigatela beach they couldn’t conceive what the chilongos could possibly find of value in this impassable thorn covered sandy beach where the waves were almost always “angry,” as the Indian women would say. They had made efforts to organize themselves and asked nothing from the government. They’d hoped to exclude the chilongos from their business as well as their lives.

There was this taxi driver who lived in Mexico city with his family and he wanted to move to the country and make a better life. He’ll move to Puerto Escondido. We’ll meet him later! His name was not Einstein., it was Guerrimo or William in English. So was Shakespeare’s (in Spanish!)

Things were going well for the chilongos. There seemed to be stability in the country. The country was developing some pride in their leader. It seemed he could change the way the world viewed Mexico. The presidente was an intelligent, well educated man who seemed to have the countries welfare as his only motive. The peso had experienced it’s longest spell of stability in it’s history. The city, D.F. with it’s influx of oil money was beginning to westernize. More and more people were being lifted from the squalor of abject poverty in to what is known as the middle class. This group was buying cars and televisions. They were going on vacations and sending their children to school. There was a great shift in the way this middle class saw themselves and their country and they were sensitive about Mexico’s position in the world. They began to spurn the blatant corruption that had run rampant in the governing body for so long. They wanted something new and more democratic. Even El Presidente was stirring the proverbial pot of change. Mexico City was another country compared to the rest of Mexico. There was opulence and wealth, people had nice homes and were well paid. They had indoor plumbing and nice clothes. They had credit cards and color television. Hey, they had refrigerators!

In Oaxaca things were still very much the same as they had been since Cortez showed up, nepotism and corruption were the grease that kept the thing running; as if, without this corruption, the whole system would collapse. Since the government had been giving land away to the peasants, the peasants were taking full advantage of the situation! It was easy enough, all a peasant had to do was move on to the property and if they were able to stay there for two years without anyone contesting their presence, they could go to the City hall and register the land as theirs. This system was being used throughout countryside Mexico. After a few years everything began to get a little confusing so if you didn’t make constant improvements on the squatted property and you didn’t live there, chances were pretty good that someone else would squat your property or what you thought was your property and it would be given to someone else.

Greed is an interesting subject and worthy of volumes, perhaps libraries of lamentation and regret. It is a seed of conflict and the motivation for many a war. It preys on the virus of insecurity and is rationalized with a tonsure of bigotry. The peasants had been educated well in the benefits of greed and with their new found prosperity and newly acquired land, set out to gather some pesos of their own. They would sell some of their precious land to anyone who had the cash. Gringos were not permitted to purchase land within 60 kms of the ocean. The peasants had little use for the beaches. Oh, the occasional day on the beach was fine but they didn’t care for the ocean like the gringo and found the gringos love for the beach curious and foolish. They also saw this attraction as an opportunity to make money. Presta nombre, (the loan of a name) was the loophole that enabled the Indian to sell land to a gringo. Although selling land to someone seems a harmless enough proposition in itself, the Indians began to sell the same lot two and three times.

There was little the gringo could do. They weren’t supposed to be buying land on the beach to begin with and if they caused a fuss, they would be deported with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The drama began when land was sold a chilongo and then the same lot was sold to another chilongo. The chilongos would come to the beaches of Oaxaca and see the beauty there and decide to build a vacation home there, since they had newly acquired wealth, property was a solid investment or so they thought.

Things were heating up in Mexico City. There was to be an election soon and the bureaucrats were lining up for the job that the presidente would soon be vacating, perpetrating all kinds of in fighting. As the political arena intensified and the stakes grew, acts of desperation were soon to follow. El Presidente had his hand picked man in the slot, sure to be elected on his word and as was the tradition. He was a younger man and reflected the new feeling that was sweeping the country or at least sweeping Mexico City! He traveled round Mexico promising the end of the corruption that had kept the country from stepping into the first world and becoming a trade power. He proposed an end to the double dealing that was suffocating foreign investment and crippling the potential of Mexico. The prompt assassination of this young idealist came as no surprise, even to him!

The country elected a new leader, one who would make placating changes and still work within the system as it stood. The ex-presidente was heralded by the world as one of the greatest monetary leaders Mexico had ever had! As a result of his brilliant innovations in the financial affairs of Mexico, he was invited to be the new leader of the World Bank. Soon after the election of the new presidente the ex-presidente left Mexico, taking with him billions of pesos and rendering the fledgling new administration broke. The value of the peso dropped like a bungie jumper who’d forgotten to attach one end to the bridge. It dropped so fast Sir Issac Newton would have to sharpen his pencil! Life savings were wiped out over night and the country lapsed into a deep recession. The bureaucrats left over from the old administration were scrambling for cover from the widespread accusations of corruption and deception. There was an outbreak of finger pointing balanced by an outbreak of denials! Charges of fraud were falling out of the sky like leaves off a dying tree in a high wind. It was a time to run for cover and find some diversion. Old alliances were called on and old scars festered as a result of the fallout of this act of embezzlement.

In search of any scapegoat, two of the old school bureaucrats decided to do lunch and discuss the possibilities available to them. One was a judge and the other was a financial minister; We’ll call them Jud and Re-fried. (Let’s go to lunch with them as flies on the wall and see what happens!)

Jud had been behind the bench a long time and had left alot of crimes unpunished, even sanctioned by his gavel. This current amazement perpetrated by his ex-boss, El Presidente, was in a class all it’s own. Nothing so heinous had happened before in Mexico, (if you can trust what you read in history books!) It seemed his angst filled profession was aging him in leaps and bounds since the big heist. His case load was doubled overnight as well.

He ordered another double tequila and waited for his colleague to arrive. He pondered the possibilities of creating a new national drama that could take some of the heat off his colleagues in the government. He pondered the lime twist in his glass. He looked at the inordinate number of flies in the cantina that seemed attracted to his table alone.

He opened his file and read; some Indians down in Oaxaca had been selling lots two and three times and while most of the frauds had effected gringos, his friend, Re-Fried had bought a lot through a agent there and it turned out to be owned by the government, some ill fated project about a vacation retreat for school teachers. Of course the agent and the money evaporated promptly but there were others that were still perpetrating similar transactions. It was at best, a wimpy ploy but Re- said he’d had some other interesting ideas that might spice things up a bit and help to push this issue to the front of the news. Jud felt dubious about the chances but he was an entertaining man and the meeting served to get him off the bench for the remainder of the day.

Jud was stretching his nose capillaries with his third double tequila when Re- arrived in a cloud of flies. Seemed to be more of them all the time. Ahh, Mexico! Re- was talking before he got in the room, like he was chatting with the invisible man or had an imaginary friend. The fact of the matter was, he was in so deep, he knew it would take a miracle to get his ass out of the fire and he’d recently developed the habit of talking to himself. Besides, with the exception of Jud here, the only other person he could call his friend was his mother and she had Alzheimer’s disease. Re- spoke to the bartender, “Make it a picture of margaritas and bring over that bottle of tequila! Jud, glad you could make it. I need to talk to you about a scheme of mine.” Jud looked doubtfully at the file that Re- had sent over with the invitation to lunch that day. The purpose of the meeting was ambiguously stated in a cover letter and the information in the file was all to do with some Indians selling lots on some godforsaken surfer beach in some chickenshit little town in Oaxaca. “What is this file for Re-? You don’t think the people of Mexico are going to be called off the chase with nonsense like this do you? Damm! We got the ex president accused of killing his own candidate, then skipping the country with half the treasury and you think you can attract their attention with some fucking Indians selling lots to gringos? It wouldn’t matter if they robbed the pope right now! With the peso falling like a meteor, those lots aren’t worth the paperwork it would take to write a bad check!!” “Hold on there Jud, I didn’t come with just the idea of a diversion. I’m in money ! If I can’t put some pesos back in the treasury soon I’ll be living in the U.S. with that skumbag, the Ex-Pres! They can’t touch me while he’s up there and it looks like the gringos plan to let him stay! My plan is on the attack and if it works, all this will be forgotten.” There was a pause as the waiter came to the table with the drinks and poured them. A fly kept landing on Re-‘s ear and Re- kept unconsciously trying to shoo it away. He slapped violently, missing the beast and creating a mild concussion in his own ear. Jud watched all this with a mild sense of amusement. He chuckled between his teeth. He coughed, then sputtered with tequila spray and said,” So what’s your cockamamie idea Re-, I’m dying to know!” “Well, the plan works like this Jud, we just cinched a deal with the U.S. for 60 billion in loan guarantees and were going to build a city for tourists, bigger than Acapulco and more expensive. That little surfer beach is going to be a world class tourist attraction in five years and all this nonsense about the Ex-Pres will have been forgotten!” Jud lifted the drunken body of a fly from his margarita and laughed,” There’s got to be more to it than just a new building project. I know your not stupid so tell me the plan!

It must be understood, chance has made a deal with greed and regularly crosses the geologic continuum in order to subsidize greed. When it does, it fuses with greed and turns into a sort of manipulated black hole and we can only hope that this lunch does not create any monsters. Being omniscient, I can tell you this; once I shared a bottle of Ripple with a wino in Costa Mesa and he told me that within the electronic charge that all matter contains is the element of chance. Seems to be tied up with the life expectancy of the geologic continuum and where it has planned to end up in 980 billion years which is the currently accepted life expectancy of the planet. A rock might know but they’re notorious introverts. There’s alot of support for this chance theory in the religious neck of the woods but they seem to be short timers and hardly reliable. On the other hand, humans, being the dexterous self-appointed gods they are, are well up to mixing greed with chance. Not a big bang mind you! We’ve got lots of time though and I want to get back to Jud and Re-, two may flies in the geologic continuum!

The flies were thick by the time the third pitcher of margaritas arrived. They were not flying around very much anymore though! After a few trips to the edge of these two men’s glasses, most of the flies were a bit dizzy and content to just listen to Re-‘s plan as he unfolded it for Jud. It went something like this; there had been a large build up on the southern border shared with Guatemala as the result of the recent unrest on that border and these troops would be moved north and on the town of Puerto Escondido, removing all the people, Indians and gringos alike. The Mexican Army would occupy the town and be in charge of security. Meanwhile the Corp of Engineers of the United States Army would move in and begin the erection of a harbor and break wall from the point to the fishing harbor; an ambitious effort, using the newest technological advances that they’d been developing for the past 20 years. The worlds largest hoteliers would be or had already been called in to begin construction on the newly cleared beaches. Much of the ground work and plans had already been drawn up for other projects and would be used here instead. The Corp of Engineers were anxious to begin implementing their new technologies, using Mexico as a testing area. Although these plans had been earmarked for another beach and were to be implemented on a later date, the two governments moved the date forward to cause a political drama and perhaps relieve the pressure that the previous Mexican administration had caused. The US had no intention of sending the ex-president or his billions back to Mexico and the help they were offering was made as a sort of conciliation. Many concessions were made on the Mexican side of the table to secure the necessary loan guarantees. The audacity and duplicity of these actions, combined with their collaborating with the United States government on so many new levels would cause such an upheaval in the country that it would be diversionary. It was sink or swim for the bureaucrats in power. Someone once said that desperate situations required desperate measures. I think this could apply here!

Fish stories and…

By the date of this luncheon was April Fools day, 1996. Al went fishing that day with his friend Conrado. Al was Conrado’s token gringo. Conrado got his Fishing permit from the local harbor master to fish out of that harbor with the stipulation that Conrado could not go fishing just to sell the fish at the beach. He had to take a tourist, a gringo or some rich chilongo. There was a standardized fee he was to charge and half of that was to go to the harbormaster. The other half would barely cover the cost of the gas. The only way Conrado could make any money with this proposition was if he caught fish that he would be able sell. Often he caught more fish than any sane tourist would want to keep. These were big game fish like Marlin or Sailfish, one of which could be up to 7 feet long and weigh up to 30 to 35 kilos. Most of the tourists that went fishing with Conrado were happy to get 4 or 5 kilos of a prime cut and a photograph with the dead beast. The rest Conrado would sell to the fishmongers that cut up the days catch for restaurants and anyone who wanted to buy fresh fish. Conrado liked to fish with Al because Al knew a bit of Spanish and was a “dead eye dick” when it came to spotting schools of fish. Conrado got to sell all the fish and Al got to go fishing for free. They’d become friends.

They left the harbor at 6 am promptly. The tuna had been running and the seas were calm for a change. It promised to be a good day for fishing since there was no moon the night before so the fish would be feeding when the sun came up. Fifteen minutes out of the harbor and Al spotted the dolphins running on the horizon. What luck! As Conrado maneuvered the boat round the rear of the school, Al dropped three lines over the side and within seconds they had two strikes. No sooner had they landed these, did the other line scream and strain with another tuna. “Put fish in the boat,” was the motto of these two and they both worked the lines as Conrado navigated the boat round and round the frenzied feeding dolphins. Ten, twelve, eighteen! They soon lost count and there was less and less room for their feet as gasping fish, unconscious, littered the floor of the tiny boat. Three hours passed and the boat began to get a little crowded with fish. The wind picked up a bit making the water rough. Conrado and Al decided to call it a day. There was always a joint in Conrado’s tackle box and Al could be counted on to bring along a bag of cold beer and ice. Conrado headed the boat for home and they got a little buzz on the way.

Putting their way back by the coast north of town Al noticed that the waves seemed to be picking up quite rapidly. Al had been a surfer since 1961. That was the main reason he’d moved to Puerto. He knew the coast well as a result of fishing with his friend, Conrado. Now and then, when the waves were too big to bother with fishing, Conrado would take Al to some of the inaccessible places on the coast for a day of freak waves; 4 to 5 meters. Conrado had tried surfing but was a lousy swimmer and never caught the bug like Al had, still he liked to watch Al risk his life. It was funny to Conrado that, in a town of egomaniacal surfer boys with endless tales of daring do, it was thought that Al had quit surfing. He never surfed on the main break any more. It was thought he’d been scared off by the amazing power of the place which was fine with him. He got to surf alone.

Al and Conrado would leave before sunrise out of the little harbor and go to a secret break where Al would slip out into the water for a few big ones. Conrado would look on, usually with a joint in his mouth and a dorado jig for garbage fish in his hand. Al was a quiet fellow, an unusual trait in a gringo that wasn’t lost on the sensibilities of Conrado. It was one of the things that bonded their friendship. As the two made their way across the chop of the late morning sea, Conrado watched the intensity grow in his friends eyes, as he looked for hints of the waves to come, discerning the direction of the new swell and it’s rhythm, it’s strength. Conrado had spent enough time in the sea to know when the waves were going to get big and from the looks of it, this was going to be a uniquely large swell.

They reached Punta Colorado and the reef there was beginning to form and re-form. Punta Colorado was a cloud break. The waves broke a half mile off the beach, only to re-form and crash on the beach. The wave broke only when it was very large because of the reef that was just under the surface of the ocean was too deep to make small waves want to collapse but was at just the right depth to cause the larger swells to break with perfect uniformity. The look was in Al’s eyes and Conrado knew he would soon be “garbage fishing.”
In the four years that Al had lived in Puerto his life had taken some dramatic twists. He was living from day to day, barely eeking out a living. He would buy and sell surfboards to make a little money. Surfers traveled there from all over the world and they would show up with tons of gear. By the time there trip was over, they’d run out of money and would sell anything and everything. Al would swoop on the bargains if he had a few pesos and then flog them when things got lean. He was always involved in some little scam to make a buck, doing this and that. He never had more than a couple hundred pesos in his pocket at any one time.

Then on February 8th he received a check from San Francisco at the post office. He had sent a manuscript six months earlier to a company there and thought it was just lost with the rest of the Mexican mail. He’d forgotten all about it. The check was for $5,000. U.S., and with the check, was a contract that he was to sign and send back to the publishing company. Al tore the contract up and took the check to the local bank, opened an account, got a pocket full of pesos and went straight to the cantina for a celebration! The week that followed could only be described as many things, one long party is what it was and he got everyone in town involved at one time or another. By the end of the week he had an entourage. (At least till he got himself arrested!)

When they finally let Al out of jail he went home in a taxi filled with supplies; chickens for BBQ, 5 cases of Dos XX, 2 cases of Corona, chipotle chilies and vegetables, things he needed in the house for months but couldn’t afford. He bought a refrigerator! It took two taxis to get all the stuff to his casita (little house). The neighbors who lived near Al’s little casita saw the taxis pull in and came to see what the excitement was about. They had news. They told him that there was two men that had been by each day for the last three days looking for him. Al, by this time, “well hung” from being on a week drunk, brushed the news off, invited all the neighbors to his place and another party began!

When the publishing agents arrived at Al’s there were 6 or 7 people in various stages of inebriation, some sleeping in hammocks, others were playing cards and sitting around eating. It was a hot day, as all of them are in February. They asked where Al was. They pointed to a tree that was on the property. There was a small platform tucked in the crux of the tree and a bed lie on top. Al was sleeping it off. They woke him and convinced him that they should talk. There was money involved and they had some serious business to discuss that would mean additional checks in the mail. Al stumbled down the ladder and sat at his table under the ramada in front of his little house (casita). His friends said their good byes and left. Al was a bit frayed around the edges from a week of drinking and popped another Dos XX. He looked at the two men with their freshly starched tropical tourist clothes on and their all too sober expressions. There was silence. He opened two more beers and set them in front of the men then he opened a jar and began to roll a joint. The two agents looked at each other for a moment. They closed their briefcases and had a few beers with Al, asking him about Puerto, why he moved there, how he liked it. It was near dark when they finally got around to the business at hand.

The contract that Al tore up a week earlier was a 10 year contract for any and all that he would write and the more he wrote, the more he would earn. The publishing house wanted exclusive rights to Al’s work and were willing to pay dearly for it. They offered to provide him with all the modern technology available to make his writing easier. They offered him this and they offered him that. They made Al feel a bit awkward with all their “sucking up.” Al wasn’t much into changing his lifestyle so drastically but he did sign a fat contract and the money for the frills went into a states side account in case he changed his mind. The three of them went to dinner in town to celebrate. Over dinner Al was told about the storm that was brewing around his book in the English speaking world, the inquiries that their publishing company was fielding for him. They had managed to keep his location secret but it would only be a matter of time before the secret got out and he should be prepared for the on slough. Slowly, as the evening wore on, Al realized that his life was going to change forever. He was excited and at the same time, he knew that what he had there in Puerto Escondido suited him fine and wasn’t too thrilled at the notion that hoards of pinche (vulgar slang) gringos invading his peace. It seemed there was no turning back! His life would be changed forever now, if for no other reason than he would have money! How money and freedom ever made it into the same bed is a whole other story. One we’ll try to get around to later!

Puerto, being a small town at the time, had it’s share of rumors. The nature of a rumor is much akin to a placebo; there is the effect without the nasty side effect. It could be a poisonous lie that grows beyond rectifying. You become cured or die of something you never had! A rumor may be a position you are given that you never applied for, a bestowed burden. Al’s took it’s form as a bestowed burden; word was out that Al had money, lots of money. Al was suddenly being sucked up to, seeked for advise on subjects he had no knowledge of, solicited for loans, approached with business propositions. He was accosted at his home, a place that, up to now he could pretty much expect to be alone at. All this attention and hyperbole was very unsettling to Al, after all, the only thing he did was write a group of poems, usually while quite drunk as well as stoned. These poems would not change a thing “as the world turned” and Al couldn’t for the life of him figure what all the ballyhoo was about. The world of human existence was certainly getting off the track and it’s set of values had been seriously deranged. Even with the advent of financial freedom Al yearned for the return of his invisibility. He wanted to walk down the street without strangers pointing at him, asking him to drinks and generally acting like he’s there long lost friend when in fact, he didn’t even know them! Many of Al’s friends were keeping their distance, what with all the strangers around, Al had become a sort of public personage and most of his friends valued their anonymity. Hanging round with Al just was to public and high key. Loneliness often visits the famous or near famous and Al as the result of having become a celebrity in a small town, was getting a big portion of that pie. It turned sour in his mouth and he longed for the good old days.
We’ll leave Al for a bit and let the pressure of notoriety do it’s work on Al’s psyche. I want to get back to Jud and Re-Fried and see what kind of buzz they have and find out how their quest to turn chickenshit into pesos is doing!

..AND CORRUPTION

Three days after our “April Fool’s” meeting, Jud and Re-Fried were on a plane to Puerto Escondido, soon to be called Puerto Escondido National! The army was moving into the Magisterio which would be the temporary headquarters of the annexation of Zigatela Beach. The local police were dusted off and given standing orders, which translated meant, they had to get out of their hammocks and look alive! The whole town was abuzz with the news that these two heavies of the central government were on their way to visit the town and all was in preparation. Since the policia were alerted of this arrival, every whore house in town was sprucing up for the anticipated fiesta! As the word spread through town, businesses stocked up for the entourage that would certainly accompany the two bureaucrats. People have a bad habit of “counting their chickens before they hatched!” There would be no fiesta, no all night parties at whore houses or bontanna’s for that matter. This would be strictly business and within a week the whole town would be totally changed; a wasteland, ready for the new occupants! There was no grand entrance, no speeches, no pats on the back, no fist full of cash received in a handshake! Immediately it became ominously obvious that this visit would not be one made for pleasure.

The tension caused by the speculation of what these government officials were doing in Puerto; working in secrecy at the Army base, combined with the fact that the Army had taken over the Magisterio grew like a atomic mushroom cloud. It could be felt as far away as Pochutla, 60 kms away. Those city fathers who had been the beneficiaries of all the corruption in the community were overwhelmed with anxiety that their deeds would be addressed by the two officials in the very near future. All the result of the invitations that were sent by Jud and Re-Fried to all the local officials in order to “discuss land distribution and community property.” Many of the officials of the town were clearly guilty of double dealing and corruption and there were many travel plans being made prior to the meetings. All this was done in the strictest of Mexican confidence! Large amounts of money were being transferred to safer and less accessible locals and all of these transactions and arrangements were secretly being monitored by the central government.

The stage was set for the slaughter! Local officials were scrambling like fruit flies in a forest fire. Small groups of local Indians; both the Zapoteca and the Mixtepeca were making their “bronze age” plans for an armed confrontation and the tourist were placidly drinking their cold beer and encouraging melanoma. There was a pause, like a silent fart who’s stench had yet to waft into the nostrils of the population.

On the pretext that the local officials were running the place like a perpetual con game, Jud and Re- had been given the authority to replace all the locally elected government officials with Chilongo bureaucrats. They were to remove all the Indians (campisinos) from Zigatela Beach and to scarify the entire beach area from the fishing harbor to the point. Two miles of beach area from the waters edge to the highway! By the time of the first scheduled meeting, the Army had already moved on to the beach and were handing out eviction notices and arresting mal-contents who demonstrated physical opposition. The campisinos would be offered free land 20 kms inland near a town named Colotepec and building materials to start anew. There were also job offers to men who wanted to help with the clearing of the new building site. The foreigners who were living and had purchased lands there with the loophole of presta nombre were to be compensated for their land only and any structure that they had built would not be considered as an asset and, so for these, there would be no compensation! Any declension from these offers by foreigners were to be dealt with by order of deportation.

The local officials were scheduled to the meetings, which took all of one day. They were admonished for their dastardly deeds, threatened with prison and then offered token pay off’s for their cooperation with the dissembling of the town! About 50% of the scheduled meetings never took place because the official the meeting was being held for had skipped town altogether! In conjunction with the U.S. Navy and the Corp of Engineers, the Mexican Army moved in a great deal of heavy equipment and the demolition was scheduled for the 13th of April. By mid day 11th of April anyone found on the beach would be arrested. There were safety zones where tourist could wait for their transportation needs to be met but there were to be no more scheduled flights into the town except for official business!

The day after the first meetings the Army combed the beach and passed out the eviction fliers or glued them to doors of any building they could find. They did the same the next day. They provided vehicles to help with the exodus. Surprisingly enough, the operation went off rather smoothly with only a handful of mal-contents were whisked away never to be seen again!

There was a news black-out, the radio station was confiscated, telecommunications were seized, all the local buses were to return to Puerto empty and were driven by Mexican Infantry! The fishing boats in the town were hired by the government to provide fish for the construction companies and water taxi’s for the Corp of Engineers that would start work in the near future. The mercado (market) was transformed into a large food processing factory, owned and operated by the government.

Jud and Re- planned to return to D.F. (Mexico City) in the middle of April and hold a news conference to divulge the official report of the creation of the new tourist city, Puerto Escondido National! With any luck, and they had covered all the bases, the whole transition would be over by the end of the month. They could begin construction on the underground work and roads when all was abandoned. It was a neat plan, and as it turned out, quite an effective one.

The campisinos moved out in surrendering silence from the town they had built and called their own for the past 10 years. The golden goose had been killed by greed and there was no reviving it. The gringo landowners were not so complacent. The fact is, they were caught with their pants down. Stories of this kind of thing happening were widespread but, “It’ll never happen here. The waves are just too dangerous for the Mexican Government to consider building a Cancun type resort here,” was the consensus of most of the gringos. The Armies notice made it clear that that was exactly what the government planned to do and their plans were so complete that the idea that there might be room for any of the existing business remaining was simply out of the question! Many of the legitimate business holders organized. There were pay off’s and then silence from that group. The consequences of refusing the offers were only speculated at but by now most everyone knew there was to be no loud and sustained opposition. Rumors of indeterminate jail sentences for dissenters was running rapid.

Next the land owners who had spent lifesaving’s on their Mexican retirement homes organized. Jud and Re- were confronted by two dozen angry gringos with legal documents and bitching about their rights as foreigners. They were all put in jail for up to two weeks to simmer down! One by one they were brought to the table and one by one, watched their dreams fall over the edge that they’d chosen to live on.

Jud and Re-Fried planned a beach sweep for the 10th of April. It was against the law to even be on the beach, yet some people remained because they either had no where to go or they simply were too shocked to move at all, like deer, frozen by the headlights of a speeding car. Old people who had been forgotten or surfers with problems with the law stateside; they would all be re-located or deported.

While, on the one hand, the United States government denied any knowledge of the situation, the other hand was in full concert with the proceedings. Governments work like that; deception for the sake of greed! The only thing the common man has working for him is “chance” and the even more illusive “luck.”

ILLUSIONS BAIT, POSSESSION

The day the Army passed out the notices Al had spent the day surfing and fishing with his friend Conrado. It was a good day; he’d gotten a few memorable waves and caught a few forgettable dorado. He had put them in a bag for dinner and as gifts for some of his neighbors. Afterward, while out fishing in a little crescent shaped bay called Roca Blanca (White Rock), he and Conrado came upon a sail boat that was anchored there. The captain, as well, the only person on board, was an old gray hared sea dog named Mr. Brown.

Mr. Brown claimed to an Irishmen. He could have been 500 years old by the looks of him but he was as spry and wiry as a old alley cat in the middle of Korea! He spoke Spanish well, although his accent while speaking English could hardly be confused with Irish; it was sort of a neutral Latin accent with some kind of Polynesian guttural undertone with the flavor of Dijon attached to it. Very strange. He signaled Conrado while Al was taking a bit of a siesta. Conrado steered over to his vessel. It looked like something straight out of the Sea of Siam; ‘bout three stories high with everything under the sun attached to the sides. He had pots and pans and laundry, chicken cages with several chickens in there, stuffed game fish, (Al counted 6 sail fish alone), flags from countries all over the world used in every conceivable way; sewn together as sails, as a canopy, his sarong/flag was from some African country, he had a bait tank he made by waterproofing an American Flag, he was flying the Mexican flag at the bow and the Paraguayan at the stern! Conrado couldn’t resist this! The boat had surfboards everywhere. There wasn’t an inch, a centimeter of boat that didn’t have the shadow of some object upon it. Al woke up with a nudge as soon as Conrado turned the boat around to answer the old mans hail.

Sleeping in a open boat at sea in the tropics can have innocuous effects and Al felt he was half dreaming when he lifted his head. “Wow.” Was this a dream he’d had? Was he dreaming? Al did not see the same thing that Conrado did and although they are the closest of friends, that is a physical impossibility in their temporal existence! Al was at the “dreamstate line.” Conrado was just inquisitive.

Al and Conrado boarded the boat the old man was dancing around and acting the fool. He was cavorting around and prancing about like a circus monkey! The two visitors sat on an old barrel and watched the old man go off. To say the least, it was a spectacle. He came over to the two when they got on deck and announced that, ”We’re in search of the circle!” Then he went into what could only be called a “tour of the vessel!”

He ran round picking up things for display, as if to present them! It was a fish bowl with a very large fluorescent crab looking thing. There was the hanging sun heated barbecue which, when demonstrated, glowed red in under a minute. There were baskets with fruit and vegetables, chilies and herbs, too many to name, as if he’d just been to the market that morning. He had propellers attached to the halyards and special rocks, paintings and musical instruments . He stopped and listened. Ssshhhhhhh. . . He lifted himself to the side and jumped overboard, laughing all the way.

Our heroes didn’t expect a moment alone. They were rendered stupefied! They couldn’t even look at each other. Slack jawed and speechless. Minutes slid by, perhaps hours or days. Time was relative so it got later. Einstein was having a laugh. Al was melting into the dreamstate line and Conrado was still inquisitive but now he was mystified as well.

Mr. Brown re-appeared from inside the boats second deck, still wet and holding some H.G. Wells type goggles and equally alien and ancient looking spear devise. He announces with a flourish, “momentito, Es pescado y cervesa bien?” (one moment, is fish and beer good)? He launched himself off the boat with the “he,he,he,heeeee,”that was never far from his lips!

Al and Conrado looked at each other and laughed. “So this is what gringos are like, huh Alberto?” Al laughed, still quite entranced by the afternoons events. The two of them took a look around the boat. It was absolutely covered in stuff, old cables, swim fins of every size and description, bottles and endless fishing gear, maps in many different languages, nautical charts, both modern and from days gone by, and there were books laid open all over the place. There were baskets with money, coins and bills from everywhere. He had potted plants and hanging plants. There were flats of herbs growing on the aft deck. In the hold he had old rope nets with glass ball floaters. He had three or four strange looking lobster cages. There was this old Russian typewriter with a page in the carriage.

There was a great chest and Conrado opened it. It was filled with ice and cold beer! They both opened one and looked to the water for their host. The sun was setting and there was not a sound from the sea. They downed two beers each and still no sign from Mr. Brown. It started to get dark and the beers weren’t keeping their interest anymore so Al and Conrado decided to go. As Conrado went to get up there was a great splash. The unmistakable splash of a great fish breaching! Conrado had heard that sound a thousand times before. As the fish re-entered the water there was a pause; then that laugh, the one of the old mans. It was demonic and it was hair curling. It was funny and it was somehow attached to the fish. You could hear the laugh drown itself in the water it re-entered the sea! Conrado and Al were dumfounded! They went to the side of the boat and looked into the twilight sea for any sign, any sparkle, any glint of light that might attract their attention. Any ripple in the sea that seemed out of place would catch their eyes. The water was still but now they expected the old man to return. Einstein was stretching time as only he can! The quiet night air was broken by the shrill laugh of the “old sea dog.” It had the sound of victory to it.

By now it had gotten so dark that Al and Conrado couldn’t see the fish the old maniac had captured at first. They could just barely tell which side of the boat this lunatic was swimming. There was a great deal of splashing and thrashing about and laughing, which is something Al was beginning to think Mr. Brown did under water as well as above. Finally, when their eyes got used to the light they could see the fish! It was a giant red snapper, the biggest one either Al or Conrado had ever seen! Not even in one of those swank fish restaurants in Acapulco where they have the fishes on display, like some morbid fish death bed that the patrons come to view before deciding what to eat, would you see a fish this big.

Conrado slipped down the side of the boat with a club and beat the beast senseless, as is the custom with large fish. Mr. Brown tied the rope round the fishes gills and Al and Conrado pulled the thing on board.

Mr. Brown climbed in after the sea monster and they all stood there, Al and Conrado first looking at this fish and then at the old man who brought it from the sea. It seemed impossible! The fish must have out weighed the old man, two to one. This old man; standing on the deck of this collaboration of a sailing vessel, butt naked with some sort of jury rigged fishing spear and those ridiculous goggles on, smiling like a court jester!

The old man knew he was shocking the foundations of reality for his two guests and he let out with one of his characteristic giggles. He reached for one of his flag/sarongs. A fillet knife appeared in his hand, as if from no-where and Mr. Brown began to clean his trophy. He offered his guests all the beer on the boat except the ones he could drink first and mentioned they could stick around for some fish treats if they liked!

Al had no notion of leaving just yet. He’d just seen this little wire of a man jump in to the sea with bare feet and a coat hanger and pull out one of the biggest red snappers he’d ever seen. ( Just a note: Red Snapper or Hunchinago as they say in Spanish is a deeeeep deep water fish and hardly ever speared but usually caught with jig lines. In addition, it is a beast that lives in the high pressure of the deep and is not fond of the atmospheric pressure of the surface. In short, no-one free dives for Hunchinago!.) There was also the excruciatingly undeniable fact that our Mr. Brown had been under water for twice the length that a healthy adult dolphin could stay under! He was clearly taken with the sheer audacity of this character.

Al managed to pull himself back from the dreamstate line. He felt more lucid than he had since he first woke up at the bottom of Conrado’s boat a few hours ago. Al had never seen anything like this boat or the captain who belonged to it.

Conrado was to remain, for the best part of the evening, silent. Everything that was transpiring was so grandiose that he just couldn’t talk. Conrado had spent lots of time with gringos but he’d never met one that was anything like this one! He was taking it all in.

Al on the other hand was just bursting with questions but whenever he asked one of the old man, he’d just giggle and keep about his work, cleaning the fish, then cooking it in that weird hanging barbecue he had on the stern of the boat, (which is one of the many weird and unexplained occurrences contained in this chronicle; how the set sun can make a solar heating device work?) drinking beers all the while and blurting out little anecdotes and sayings, all in a myriad of languages.

Al stood and watched. Mr. Brown made dinner and the two of them had a sort of a conversation! Mr. Brown would deftly begin to perform some culinary task and Al would think about something, like where Mr. Brown might have got that tool and Mr. Brown would blurt out, “Chile!” never missing a beat. Al watched Mr. Brown produce tools and food out of nowhere, they just seemed to appear! Al would verbalize a question and Mr. Brown would just continue with his task, then expound on the workings of an early American library or something equally unrelated. Al would ponder why Mr. Brown would answer him in such a way? Was there a hidden message in what was being said? Mr. Brown appeared to be the original intrepid traveler, severely lucid, an eccentric genius. His answers had to have some hidden relevance.

Al got a very strong feeling from Mr. Brown, as if Mr. B was looking at Al very intently whenever Al was looking away. Strangely Al did not feel uncomfortable about this feeling. On the contrary, Al had a certain ‘at home feeling.’

Dinner was served in bowls, and eaten with fingers. First lettuce and greens with rice over and fish over that. The bowls were very large and there was too much food. Mr. Brown put some dried herbs in the Barbecue after he’d finished cooking on it and there was a smoky glow about the scene. It was a windless night and they soon fell into hammock and fell asleep.

As was his custom, Conrado woke up with the chickens. It was going to be a good day for fishing for Conrado and he wasn’t going to catch a thing. He lifted his head to the offshore breeze and could smell the fish. He nudged Al who was very much gone with the wind. Al stirred, then lifted his head with a quizzical furrow on his brow. He could smell the fish too. As they stumbled to their feet, they looked around for Mr. Brown. They weren’t surprised to find that he was not there. It was time to go and they had no idea where Mr. Brown was or when he might return. It all seemed like a dream to both of them now, in the chill of the morning. If it wasn’t for the stark reality of the boat that they found themselves on, the whole episode would have become unmentionable, like some lurid hallucination. Like a dream you have about someone that is so out of the ordinary, so perverse that you couldn’t risk mentioning the experience of meeting them.

Al went to untie the bow line of Conrado’s boat as Conrado climbed down the rope ladder to start the motor. That’s when he caught his fish! His boat was filled with hauchinango, eight big ones. He had to climb over them to get to the back of the boat. It was all he could do to contain his excitement at the sight of it! It was early morning and he knew who the “elf” was! He wanted to thank the little man, he wanted to hug him and buy him beer! He wanted him to marry his sister! He wanted to say, “muchas gracias!” It was just getting light and Conrado could go straight to the beach, sell his fish and call it a day. That’s what he thought.

In whispered animation, the two launched the little boat and quietly glided away. Mr. Brown, perpetrator of impossible fish stories, out there somewhere, living in his self made world, would not hear their good-byes. When Conrado made the mouth of the bay he went to full throttle and headed towards the harbor.

The nights events were like some kind of conspiracy that had been revealed to innocents and they felt like they had to keep it secret. It was somehow threatening, having the knowledge that someone like Mr. Brown existed at all; a very suspicious association. There was guilt written all over their faces. They could see it in each others eyes and it made them laugh! Conrado slowed down the boat and they had a “safety meeting.” They had a laugh! Some fish stories are just too big, too outrageous to even consider telling anyone. (Me, being omniscient, can tell these larger fish stories with unabashed candor since I view fish stories as a genre and not with the earnestness and conviction of your local yokel) They decided that Al would jump off the boat at his house and surf in. Conrado would return to the marinaero (fishing harbor) and say he went night fishing for haucinango. He had all the gear on the boat and only had to deal with the other hauchinango fisherman who would surely want to know where in the hell he got THOSE fish!!! Conrado knew how to smile away stupid questions!

A CIRCLE COULD BE,

April 5th was going to be a very big day for alot of people in Puerto Escondido! That world was going to change in a way no one would have thought possible only 2 days earlier! It was to be a day of exclamations points!!! There would be crying and screaming. People would be beaten and even killed. Peoples dreams would be destroyed and other peoples dreams would come true. Big Day!

Conrado took Al to the beach just in front of his house. The waves were very big all along the surfer beach and there seemed to be a great deal of activity considering how early it was in the day. Al and Conrado had another laugh about their amazing adventure, then Al slipped off the boat into the sea with his board and paddled towards the beach. Conrado brought his little boat around and headed towards the marinero.

Al had seen the army patrolling the beaches before; young Mexicans with rifles, wandering up and down the beach, looking threatening but usually just checking out the gringo girls that were sunbathing topless. It didn’t seem too out of the ordinary although there was more of them than usual. He caught a medium sized wave and rode it to the beach, tucked the board under his arm and made his way to his casita.

Before he could get his gate his neighbors stopped him and asked him if he’d heard the news? He’d only been gone for a little over 24 hours. His neighbors seemed animated with distress as they followed him into his yard. There was the exclamation for all this angst! A government notice had been glued to his door! While he read the notice his neighbors chattered away in a nervous little group, waiting to see how their gringo neighbor would react. The notice read, “Your home and the land it’s on has been found to be located on newly annexed property of the Mexican Government. You will be required to vacate these premises no later than the 10th of April! Any person or property found on Zigatela Beach on the 11th of April will be arrested by the Army!” The notice went on to offer transportation for any campisinos that were moving to Colotepec and temporary housing for gringos who would be traveling out of the area. Al was shaken a bit but he could hardly be considered shocked! His neighbors on the other hand were despondent! They had built there homes here, if you could call them that; little dirt floor hovels with corrugated tar roofs and usually just palm leave walls. They cooked outside over a wood fire and showered with a bucket. It wasn’t much. It was all they had. They were happy. For people who had nothing to speak of, losing everything was a devastating blow! It meant starting over. It was a sad day. The men were sharpening their machetes, not for violence, but because they knew they would be working hard at trying to make their way in, still another donated wasteland. More land to clear and perhaps 8 to 12 years of being settled, till the government saw that they could do something with that land and they would throw them off again. Like now!

For Al, all he could do was empathize with them. There was nothing anyone could do but empathize. The army had reinforcements coming into town by the truck load and they had set up camp at the Old Magisterio, patrolling the beaches in ever growing numbers. All of them had copies of the Notice with them and were handing them out to everyone, campisinos and tourist alike! Al had 5 days to make travel plans!

The Mexican government made it quite impossible to contact anyone, even if Al had wanted to. He thought he’d go north to Rio Nexpa and hang out there for a bit. Perhaps he would go further south to Guatemala or Costa Rica or Panama. With all the unwelcome notoriety that was coming his way, traveling might be just the ticket! All things being equal, he thought he’d throw a party with some of the “fun chips” that he’d recently come into. What better use for money than giving despondent people a way to forget about their troubles!

Al began rolling joints, drinking beers, one after another. The local tienda (small shop) was selling out of everything and Al sent his neighbors son with a crisp one hundred dollar bill for the owner so he would come back. It worked like it only works in Mexico!

Al struck a deal with the Patron (the boss) to purchase all the chickens, pigs and beer and Mescal that the community could muster. He would then have a party! Free to everyone,( while supplies last. Offer not good after 10 April.) Manyana, not today. Al crawled up to his bed in the tree.

The days events were played over in his mind. The sea roared in anger! A dog was barking and the bontanna was playing the music very loud. There was little beetles flying around in their awkward way and crash landing in their blind pursuit. Pursuit of what, we could only guess! Unable to take flight, they would crawl about blindly on whatever they happened to land on. The ants would then carry this still live creature off to some secret place and consume it. The offshore wind had kicked up so the misquotes were not in flight. Brisas Zigatela! (Thorns where the breezes blow)

There were two tribes living in the area; the Mixta and the Zapoteca ‘s. They had been in the area for centuries, well before Cortez tried to bring them under control. They’d managed to stick. Their customs were very similar but they were age old enemies and that division was still apparent. The two groups kept largely to themselves and within their families. During Aztec times this beach was used by these two cultures for an affair called Flower Wars. The priests of these two peoples would arrange a battle in order to capture warriors of the opposing group and sacrifice them to the Gods. This battle was not in order to kill in battle but to usurp the power of the other group and elevate their position in the eyes of the deity. On the pre-arranged day the two groups would meet on Zigatela beach and endeavor to capture by maiming members of the other group and taking them prisoner. Rather than cutting their opponents with their obsidian swords they would hit them with the broad face of the sword in hopes of disabling them. After a specific period of time the battle would be called to an end and each group would return to their communities with the captured. They would have a ceremony where the priests would, with great fanfare, cut the chest of the prisoner open without killing him and reach inside his chest cavity and remove his beating heart. These priest were quite a sadistic crew but they were held in great esteem by their constituents. The Aztec priests would then remove this mans heart and throw it into a stone container with the others. It was not uncommon for five or six hundred men to meet their deaths in this way and both groups had similar ceremonies.

The sun was just setting when the news of the impending party hit the streets of Puerto Escondido! Al Fwada had put out the word that he would throw the party to end all parties! It was to be a distraction from the woes of a community that, up till now had remained rather independent. The Indians for their part were usually quite happy to remain to themselves, their parties were always quite large and loud. They did not seek out the friendship the gringos because their cultures were so different and most of the Indian families stuck pretty close together and rarely befriended strangers.

Over the years since Cortez, the Indians had had Catholicism shoved down their throats and, as a result were staunch practitioners. The Virgin of Guadelupe has a sanctuary in most every Indians home in Oaxaca. Still there were certain practices that they still shared of their ancestors and kept faithfully, like the thread of a loved ones hem that has now departed.

Now and again, when there was a wedding or the celebration for the first year of a child’s life all the relatives would gather for a party. People would travel for days to be present for one of these celebrations. They were considered social affairs and if you didn’t make an appearance the family would feel shunned. Bad form. Besides these parties lasted for days and they were a lot of fun as well as a lot of great food and always a band.

The gringos had parties for an entirely different reason; just for the sake of partying. Occasionally these two groups would cross over when a gringo would marry an Indian but that was about as far as it would go. The fiesta that Al was throwing was going to erase the line between the two groups for the first and last time. Everyone in the community had been transformed into a traveler and so their were no plans to be made, no business propositions to become entangled in and nothing to do but wait. A party was something everyone could agree to and so it was on.

When Al woke up, the morning sun was just making the top of the mountain. He heard the roar of the sea. The waves were unusually large that morning and the angry sea was calling out to him. He made his customary cup of strong coffee and wandered down to the sea to have a look. As he expected the waves were 3 meters plus and in perfect form. He went back to his casita and took his favorite board down from it’s shelf and headed out to the break.

He went to his usual break, just a bit north of his casita. There was no one out and there never was. It was a large and fast moving swell and the mounds of sand beneath the water were formed for perfection. The tide was low and made the waves work even harder, exploding on the sand bottom and turning the emerald sea into a sandy cauldron of white foam soup. It was going to be a great session; waves like bowls formed in tapered peaks, like salt water tongues, curling over themselves and then crashing down! The channel was a torrential river flowing straight to sea, like a water conveyor belt out to the waves. It was all timing, the sequence of the waves and the pause between, a thing that Al had practiced for years and had taken to heart. He waited. He watched. Finally he got in the water and paddled out though the break. The water was moving violently out to the zone, the impact zone that is!

Al got outside and just laid there on the sea. It was as if he’d been granted a reprieve from the current affairs. He had a moment to ponder the events of the past few days. He was being ‘ thrown away’ by the politicos, he was being hounded to write or be some sort of expert in a subject that he had little or no real background in. Then there was Mr. Brown! He wondered where Mr. Brown might be right now, what might be his agenda. There was some sort of connection between the two, as if Mr. Brown had some information to impart to Al although he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. The strangest thing of all was that there was no real communication between the two yet he had this very strong feeling that some how or other Mr. Brown was familiar with Al in the most basic way. Al had been drifting on the sea, just floating there.

The waves were building with each group of set waves. Al had been laying outside just daydreaming. The sea had often been his sanctuary from the confusion of the world and he wished now that he could simply stay there although he knew he could not!

Waves; the swirling power of the sea played out again and again on the lap of the land! La Mar, always feminine, “The Deep,” is a vast drama and it’s hard against the land. Tormented, tumultuous, endlessly exasperated, then resting, then, , , exploding! No individuality can remain part of the sea and maintain it’s individuality. The restless sea; for millions of years the land has changed form, the sea has not. The sea melds. The sea takes what’s for the taking and wears on the rest. The sea wishes for less beaches. The land is building more! It is an age old conflict and it’s also a difference of approach; while the sea seems to be in a constant state of flux, the land has moody periods followed by long silences.

Human existence hardly figures into this mix although this conflict, witnessed by humans has a grand effect on their perceptions. Perceptions of the natural world shape what humans perceive as their rasion detre. (reason for living) It shapes their lives and it has a direct effect on what thoughts enter their minds. Everything about humans is effected by their surroundings. Human existence had deified nature and, although that idea had been rendered as paganism, it was irrevocably incorporated into their emotional consciousness.

The ocean had played a very large part in this effect. Volumes have been written about the sea. In every country, in every part of the world, even where there is no sea, human existence is and always has had a great love affair with the sea. Perhaps unrequited, this affair prevails no matter how heinous the sea had behaved, as if human consciousness somehow has the desire to be part of that body and, since leaving, feels the need to return! Like some kind of Oedipus complex; where humans, compelled to live on the land are in love with the sea: the practical land, the romantic sea.

Another set began to brew on the horizon and one particular wave of the set caught his eye. He paddled into its face and then down, standing at the apex of its critical mass, sliding down to its trough and turning up into it’s void. He stood within its thundering maelstrom, calmly elated. He turned out of the wave and looked for another, and another, still another. There was something of loneliness in these waves and at the same time there contained the power to face that loneliness without fear or hopelessness.

Al spent the best part of four hours surfing. He returned to the beach with the feeling that you can only get after a good session in large surf. On his return home he found the Patron there with 12 Indians and a truck load of goodies for sale; Mescal, cases of beer too numerous to count, baskets of fruit and vegetables, two or three goats and a dozen live chickens. Another truck arrived, loaded with firewood for the barbecue. Al put the Patron in charge of purchasing. The prices that Al would pay were set. Food and drink were flowing in from all over the community, much of it donated to the cause. The Indians were surprised that a gringo would donate so much of himself for no apparent benefit. The money that Al was spending would be quite useful to the Indians in the impending move that they were all about to make and by buying the things, Al would be making their loads lighter, after all, it’s much easier to carry pesos that live chickens and there would be chickens to buy where ever you might go in Mexico.

There was much preparation for the party and all the people who showed up were busy lending a hand. Soon the group grew into a crowd and the preparations had engulfed all of the land where Al’s little casita was. There were people arriving all the time with more provisions. There were groups of soldiers wandering round the area with their leaflets and watching the activity. It was curious to them. These young men had mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers and were from villages very much like the one they were charged with evacuating. It was a job their hearts were not into. They knew there would be no trouble with these people. There was no point in the Indians trying to fight the government, they were outnumbered and out gunned and the hearts of the people hadn’t the will to die for some thorn-ridden beach. There were plenty of other places to live and making a stand would only prove futile! Both groups accepted the situation with silent disgust and were complacent to move, and avoid any confrontation. Still, there were four days till they had to leave.

As usual, the women were doing all the work while the men busied themselves with drinking and butchering the animals that would soon be in tacos and other treats. The preparations for the party began to expand out from Al’s and into other houses nearby. Women were making Mole chicken tamales (a chocolate based chili sauce) and sweet rice, holes were being dug for barbecuing, barrels of ice arrived and were being put to use in a number of ways.

It was mid-day by the time the gringos started to arrive. Word had made it’s way down the beach by the usual vehicle, rumor! Rumor had it that there was going to be a big bash down the beach from the tourist area and the die-hards were coming out of the woodwork.

Many of the tourist were anything but tourist. Some were fugitives from the law in other countries but they were all fugitives from something or other; lives that had become stale, spouses that were unrelenting, wars that were forever raging inside minds but had long since been won or lost. Puerto Escondido had become a home away from home for all these “tourist,” and they were hard pressed to leave. Life had been easy here and it would be difficult to find another place that would provide the same kind of freedom. In this case a party would suit to ease the angst for a bit and a party with the Indians might prove to be a cultural event; one not to be missed!

Most of the gringos arrived in small groups on foot. They came with luggage. This party would be their point of departure; nothing like leaving on a trip after a 4 day party. It was around 3 PM when a large truck rolled up in a cloud of dust, the back of which was filled with laughing, shouting gringos. It was Gary of the Cabo Blanco and his entourage. There were always people with Gary. He had been the owner of the Cabo Blanco,” Where Legends are Born!” It was a restaurant/bar that had become “party central” in the ten years that Gary owned the place and now it too was to be demolished. Gary had been forced to sell out and, after all the hard work he’d put into the place, he had a bit of bitter baggage to carry round now. He arrived in this large truck filled with crazy drunk gringos, a bar full of liquor and his stereo. He was in the party mode and would be for some time to come but that’s another story that we may not have time for here.

Al and Gary had been friends for many years and Al’s house was a place Gary could almost always find peace away from the hectic life of a cantina owner. Gary was a chilongo but preferred to call himself Oxacaian. He’d lived in the area for a very long time and was one of the first people to start a business on the beach. All that was over now as was the sanctuary that Al’s provided!

Gary took over as Master of Ceremonies for the rest of the party! He was a pro, someone who partied for a living, knew how to get people to loosen up and have a good time. He gathered a few people together that played music and within and hour of his arrival, there was a band jammin’ on Al’s porch. The dancing began and the intensity of animation increased. Gary had people up with the band, singing that had never sung in public in their lives. There were people dancing that hadn’t taken a step for years.

In the periphery place was beginning to look like some sort of refugee camp, hammocks were being put up and families were setting up camp all round the little casita. There were little campfires here and there with families sitting round them cooking. Children huddled together, waiting, bewildered at why their families were on the move.

The band was blaring as the sun began to make it’s trip into hiding. Mescal had been flowing like water and although there were several people who’d had enough, there just as many who would never have enough! The music kept on all through the night and never stopped as the sun made it’s blinding appearance on the horizon and there were many bleary eyed participants there to greet it!

During the night, with the arrival of still more people, the fence around Al’s house came down. It was put there to keep out the horses and goats that wandered round the neighborhood but it would be of no use now. The place was littered with debris of every possible description and amongst the melee were bodies of the defeated; defeated by Mescal or dancing for hours on end, or just giving up, giving in to the exhaustion of being “thrown away;” paled by hopelessness, faked out by Chance and knocked out by GREED!

Al had been drinking all day. Mescal. Mescal is a hallucinogen made with cactus of the same family as aloe vera, the great healer. On this night it had healed many nerves but it had not soothed the hearts of those who had imbibed. Al wandered through the campground; there were little bits of fires here and there where people slept in small groups, huddled together under the star filled sky, dreaming in each, their own worlds. Al was wandering towards the sea through the hoard. His eye was caught by a restless sleeping women. She lie huddled behind her man; clutching, gripping at his back. Her eyes were closed and seemed to be straining for something to see, like a rescue boat on the horizon as seen by a lone marooned mariner, as if she were straining to be recognised by someone who was far away and couldn’t possibly see her, hoping against the odds, asleep!

Al realized he was staring and her man was cuddled up with his machete. He walked away.

He kept his eyes down, looking where he was going and unconsciously watching the active sleepers. He was drawn into their nights by their itinerate lives or their dream speech. As he walked, he happened into his own dream.

RETURNING TO IT’S BEGINNING

The dream world! The Aboriginals of Australia call it The Dream Time. Much of what humans call reality consists of dream inspired endeavor. Dreams seem to guide or shape the very attitude and motivation of human existence. The landscape of the dreamworld is alien because the possibility of manipulation is vastly reduced; as is the ego, human dreams are extensions of many waking thoughts and they are interpreted as such, or likewise, are disregarded as unimportant, as some sort of night time entertainment. Still the nuance of that dream on the following days endeavors takes its shape as motivation, all as the result of a dream. A dream, most likely forgotten!

So now Al’s following where his feet must go. He’s trapped in the elements he’s made of; Water, Fire, Earth and Air! The things that cross his mind do because it’s “of him.” His chemical make up does not change him into an alien when he’s dreaming or while he’ awake. He is made of these things, water, fire, earth, air. The Ceramics Department; dreams or May Flies; it’s the same. Some are made of water and some are made of fire but nothing will quench the intrinsic but the elemental.

Al sat down on the sand and gazed out to the star lit sea. The unbroken waves were dark lines, darker and darker, then exploding white. The waves struck a beat. He lay down and put his mind into the rhythm. It was home, or near it. He got comfortable. He thought he was awake. He found himself snapping out of a dream! The delineation between the two became less and less, more and more. He relaxed with it. Something occurred. He heard something. He began to see waves, bigger and bigger. One wave. It kept breaking round and round, bigger, then smaller. A wave that never touched land, just broke in a huge circle! Al thought he heard Mr. Brown whisper,” We’re in search of the circle..” The wave was like a huge bowl. It moved slowly toward the land and relentlessly, occultating in a circle, edging slowly toward, then away, closer now. Al felt he must raise the alarm.

The sound of the sea was beginning to get painful. He saw himself rise in this dream and go to warn the town that something terrible was coming from the sea! He was running through the deserted roads of the village looking for anyone. He found a tienda and was pounding on the door, trying to get the attention of anyone who might be there. He stood in the street and yelled the names of people he knew lived there. Silence. He ran to the shop of the Patron. He banged on the door, he yelled out his name. All the village had vanished into sleep too deep to disturb or were gone. Al rose and lunged to the door of the tienda and broke it down. He went in, yelling all the while. He began to look around for something that would help him alert the people. He became tired and leaned against one of the shelves. He was seeing that circle. The circle. A name came into his head; Almera, the Almera Circle! He yelled it out! It came clear to him what he must do! He ran into the street and yelled, ”Almera No Alto! Almera No Alto!”(Almera doesn’t stop!)

He ran back into the tienda and began searching for something, he wasn’t quite sure what it was. His eye caught a case of spray paint and he lunged for it. He painted the words,” Almera No Alto,” on the walls over and over again! He took the box of cans and ran back out to the street.

The light of the moon shone down in bursts between the nights clouds like a fickle branding iron! A wall came to his attention as if a spot light brought its existence to his attention. Al bolted to the newly revealed wall and sprayed the credo on its surface. As the clouds hid the spot light of the moon, Al would retreat. Lurking in his dream of terror, waiting for the next beat of the rhythm, the next break in the clouds to reveal still another universe, another canvas for his art. (Another tree falling in the forest where there is no-one to hear.)

Al had lost track of time and although he was moving in the physical world, he had a deep feeling that he was dreaming the whole thing in the safety of his tree. He, in fact, he woke there, the party still raging. He climbed out of the tree with a feeling of being well rested and joined the throng. Gary was there and asked Al where he disappeared to? Al replied that he’d gotten tired and went to the beach and that was all he could remember. There was dried paint on his hands but no-one noticed.

The second day of the fiesta went on much as the first; people coming and going, dancing, eating, drinking and then falling asleep in a plethora of attitudes and states of inebriation. On the third day the party began to show signs of disintegration. Many had long journeys to embark on and were anxious to begin. Others simply had had enough. By the morning of the last day the party had become more like the aftermath of a battle! The Army had been moving in closer and closer too. It was no longer a huge throng but had become a large group of very trance-like pagans. Their vigor spent, they were now only going through the motions of celebration.

Each night around the same time, Al, a sleep walker, rampaged the streets. Each morning he would remember nothing. The Army had taken notice that the words “Almera No Alto” were appearing on more and more walls throughout the colony and their appearance seemed to spread outward from the epicenter of the party. They thought it some sort of conspiracy being perpetrated by the group. Not above intrigue, the Army sent in infiltrators. They found nothing but a transients party; people dancing, taking drugs, talking, making love, packing, trading things, drinking, eating, sleeping, coming and going. There was no group conspiracy.

On the morning of the last day of the party one of the Army spies noticed that Al had paint on his left hand and went to question him about it. Rather then just make small talk concerning the paint, and with all the subtly of a brick dropped on a naked foot, our stealthy spy asked Al, “Que es de Almera cabron?” (What is the Almera tough guy?) The question was jolting and alarming to Al’s sub-conscious mind. Although he couldn’t remember what it was, or doing anything during his nightly walks to the beach; the word, Almera scratched something in his mind. This Mexican “Couseau”” saw the shadow of doubt flush over Al’s face and knew he’d struck a nerve. Al brushed the question off with claimed ignorance and offered the man a pull of Mescal.

The spy wandered off but Al’s eyes followed him for half an hour. He watched as the man casually wandered away from the party. With each step the man took, Al felt he was in more and more danger of loosing his freedom. He had to escape right now! He wasn’t sure why but the paint on his hands seemed very odd. He hadn’t painted anything for years. Hated to paint! Almera? Why did that sound so familiar? What was happening? The Sea! As he slowly walked over to his board rack Al had the feeling eyes were upon him. He rationalized that it was perfectly normal for him to go surfing. It was seven in the morning. He told himself no-one was watching but didn’t believe it. Al took his board and sauntered toward the beach. He felt his gait had a little to much confidence about it. He was painfully self-conscious. The closer he got to the beach and away from his casita and all the people, the eyes, the safer he felt!

The waves were thunderous, blocking the horizon even before the offshore wind began to lift the thin water from their tops in majestic plumes of spray. Getting outside in this surf was going to be a trick. Round cauldron’s of power spitting the sea out their mouths. The rip-tides were massive, being fed by rivers that flowed along the beach. It was like something you’d see at the Orinaco Flow in springtime, raging torrents of water taking the land away, re-capturing what belongs under water.

Second thoughts entered Al’s mind. The sea WAS angry! He sat and watched the sea rage on. Twenty wave sets followed by a short five wave lull. Then another set of twenty two. A seven wave lull. The sea was unrelenting against the beach, pushing further and further into the sand, taking more and more beach! The waves were so large that when the crests began to fall it took 3 or 4 seconds for them to reach the bottom! It was slow motion or seemed to be because of the volume of it!

Al was trying to time the sets and find the rhythm of the swell when he noticed a group of soldiers gathering up the beach. They were 500 meters away. He watched them and they were walking towards him. They seemed to be walking with intention and he thought he must be paranoid. Then he noticed that one of them was the spy that had asked him about Almera. His heart jumped! He was about to be “cut out of the herd” so to speak. Al stood up with his board and walked to the seas edge. Looking out to sea he saw the last two waves of the set about to hit the sand bar. Then he saw the mast of a boat rise and fall behind the last wave of the set. After the wave broke there would be a short lull. That’s when Al decided he would go out. The soldiers were closing fast and it was obvious that his paranoia was well founded. They were coming for him. Al took another step closer to the water and the soldiers were yelling and waving their hands at him but Al was leaving Puerto Escondido right now! He looked out to sea and saw the boat that the mast he’d seen earlier. It was a vessel that was easily recognizable. It was Mr. Brown and he was edging closer to the shore, waving his arms for Al to come along! Al lunged into the sea, paddling over to the rip-tide and was swept out to sea. He could hear the voices of the soldiers fading as he gained more distance from the shore. The rip-tide carried Al past the impact zone and beyond the waves and Mr. Browns boat came into full view. Mr. Brown was on the main deck, waving a checkered flag, and waving Al on.

Al paddled out past the breaking waves of Mexico, away from the beckoning of the Mexican soldiers and away from a life he had become accustomed to. He paddled away from a career! What his dreams were revealing to his consciousness he managed to ignore but Chance took the reins. It pushed him over the brink. On a conscious level Al saw this as an escape but the excitement that he was feeling was not as a result of escaping; he was in the flux here. He was letting go of something he’d grown tired of, something he’d outgrown. He was reaching for something, he didn’t know what it was.

Mr. Brown represented something to Al that he felt the beginnings of in himself but he couldn’t put his finger on. He sensed that Mr. B could provide some answers. Their relationship, short as it was, gave Al some food for thought in the form of questions that Mr. B seemed to have the answers to although he never answered them directly. Al got the impression that he was headed for new a plateau. New heights were in the horizon for Al and he was climbing their heights with every stroke he paddled. His heart was jumping with anticipation. He left the beach in fear of loosing his freedom and arrived on Mr. B’s boat with the excitement of a child at Christmas. Reaching for something was never so easy and would not prove to be this easy again!

Mr. B greeted Al on board with all the fan fare you would expect of him; there was jumping about and a great madness of joy and welcome. The boat came a little too close to the shore and listed in the surf dangerously. A and Mr. B were startled by the action and forgot their celebration for the moment. Al helped with the trimming of the sails till they were out of harms way. He found a spot under the aft deck where the sails were stowed and fell into sleep. Mr. B took the tiny boat towards the southern hemisphere. Al was on a journey that would end up where it started but he didn’t know that yet. Mr. B did and he was on the same kind of journey. Al didn’t know that either but he was along of the ride and there certainly wasn’t any turning back now!

OBSERVED AS A LINE

Al slept for three days, never moving from his spot beneath the aft deck. His dream speech reflected that his subconscious mind had made peace with the change. It was the calm chatter of one who, after critical self observation had gained approval of his super-ego. This observation was one that Mr. Brown had made while eves-dropping just over Al’s head, standing at the helm. It wasn’t so much the words because it was mostly babble; it was the tone of his voice, the way he spoke the words; not arguments but agreements were being made. It was the breathy chat of pillow talk.

Mr. Brown was well versed in the psychological mayhem that most human beings were entangled. He knew that for the most part these beings were in constant conflict with themselves about what they felt they should be doing and what they knew their society would expect of them. Natural hedonist, their world expected them to be pragmatists; this the birth of their life long conflict. One that very few could escape from.

Al managed to spurn the expectations of society and, in his sleep, found a new place where he could exist. Mr. Brown was pleased with his new traveling companion. He was just the sort.

Mr. Brown was ultimately headed toward the Cordillera Basin, where the sea churns in a big circle; starting off the coast of Mexico, near the Isthmus of Tehuantepec it then turns west and flows all the way to northern Australia, south off the east coast of Van Deimans Land and back north along the west coast of New Zealand. North again around the northern tip, and then east and a bit south, back towards the coast of South America and Chile, then back to the beginning, or the end. A oceanic river! This was the largest area of sea on the planet and Mr. B knew he would find the winter storm tracks here. That was exactly what he was looking for. His rendezvous was set for the winter cycle, in the southern hemisphere, sometime during this season.

The winter storms of the southern hemisphere were just beginning to crank up and Mr. B was right on schedule. It was standard navigation for Izarian astronauts to use storms to land and take off. The concept works in concert with an oceanic storm, since they both move in a circular motion in relation to the same object. Storms generally move in an oval shape as viewed from the top and orbiting bodies travel in an ellipse, around the planet they are orbiting. There are two problems with landing on that planet; one will be stopping and one will be taking off again. If, at the low trajectory of the objects orbit around a planet it should shorten its arch so that it comes under the influence of that planets gravitational pull then that object will come to rest on that planet. Crashing abruptly is another very strong possibility! Finding a method of decelerating and a place with the most consistent surface density is the problem that faces all space travelers unless they just want to stay up there and there isn’t much point in that.

The astronaut monitors the storm tracks of the planet he is circling as he is in orbit. In the case of the Planet Earth, the astronaut looks for storms at sea and, when located, calculates their course so that they would come into the gravitational pull of the planet and smack against the direction of the storm and into the sea where it's safe. This plan of entry worked in the reverse when they wanted to leave the planet; beginning under the water, in the eye of a storm, they launch themselves with the direction of the storm and out of the atmosphere.

The Izarians had been able to fly for over 207 celestial cycles, a celestial cycle is about 5,000 earth years. The first Izarian to visit the planet Earth, with anything more than a vacation on his mind was about 68,000 years ago, give or take a couple thousand years. They’d known about the planet Earth for quite a while. There were quite a few little planets in the galaxies to visit and enjoy. Theirs was a peaceful life. They had gotten bored with just lying around a beach in this solar system or that. They wanted amusement but they were not aggressive in the greedy sense of the word. They were more passively inquisitive, like a child who is a little too smart but smart enough to be cautious. They began to toy with the idea of imparting a bit of knowledge; an effort to create some new friends. Evolution was a bit slow. They thought they’d give it a bit of a nudge, via intergalactic miscegenation; Earthlings and Izarians. It was going to be one of those long term projects and would take Izarians to Earth to do something other than swim the vast oceans that covered that planet. They would have a project, things to report back so they could develop a consensus on how to proceed, ergo, Mr. Brown.

It was time for Mr. B to go home so he was headed for his launching pad, The Cordillera Basin. It’s a breeding ground for storms Mr. B intended to spend the next 6 months traveling around that area of the South Pacific. This area of the world was where Captain Cook’s mythical continent was never found although he spent the best part of a year looking for it, all he found was a few lonely islands. There was an Izarian sailing around the area then too but they never ran into each other.

First stop would be a tiny port in northern Columbia where Mr. B and Al will take on supplies, then west into the Peru Current and, with any luck, straight into a storm and, with a little luck and good timing, off the planet all together. He had yet to make contact with the rendezvous ship but he was still a few months from the scheduled window.

Al woke on the morning of the fourth day sailing. He was a bit groggy after sleeping so long and thought that only a day had passed. He found the tiller un-manned which struck him as a bit odd. He took the wheel and, absentmindedly glanced at the compass that seemed pinned to 120 degrees East, south east. Al was at the tiller for a couple of hours and the compass never veered off that course more than 5 degrees in either direction. He began to wonder where Mr. Brown had vanished to. There were baskets of fruit on the aft deck and Al ate a bit. He wondered what was going on in Puerto Escondido. He also wondered where this intrepid traveler was taking him. It was obvious that they were heading for warmer climes and that made Al feel at ease. He knew the further south they traveled the warmer it would get. He liked it hot.

Mr. Brown appeared on the second deck of the vessel dressed in still another of his seemingly endless flag/sarongs. He was reading a book and eating a handful of dates. He looked up and acknowledged that Al had finally joined the world of the living. He seemed enthralled in the book he was reading and Al was still quite stunned by all the sleep he’d had. The silence was fine.

Al had a thousand questions for Mr. Brown. His mind began to play the tapes so to speak. He was beginning to look at the world in an entirely different way than he’d ever looked at it before. He seemed to have found a new clarity, and he began to recognize facts that till now he’d overlooked. He was remembering things that he no occasion to have learned. It was indeed a circle, the whole illusion of life and everything that was contained there. It was the means to an end as well as the end of the means. He’d come full circle. His old life was gone, the past. Irretrievable!

He reviewed what had happened in his dream on Zigatela Beach and it was puzzling now because he realized it wasn’t a dream. The fear of it had left him and he felt a bit embarrassed by it all. He remembered feeling the need to be the hero in the uniquely arrogant human sense of the word. Now that desire, that feeling of being compelled seemed a bit shameful.

The Earth was turning on its axis and the axis was turning as well. He realized the folly in his fear of change and his need to maintain control. It seemed the human error. Not the self preservation aspect of it; the failure to adapt to it, to accept it, even rejoice in it. The systems that humans had built did not provide for change in the natural sense. Things were set up to remain static. As if, ”The women that visits me today will be the same women that visits me five years from now.” There was a deep rooted, culturally imposed denial mechanism that clouded the way humans perceive the worlds changes, as well, their own. It was obvious to Al that this was the source for a great deal of the disappointment and frustration that life had dealt him. It was over now! He would accept changes, dive into them, invite change to become a part of his life.

Mr. Brown was quietly observing Al in his own alien way. He saw the change come over Al’s face. It was a short step, the first of many. There would be larger ones to deal with soon. He wanted to communicate with Al but the only way Al knew was talking which was too primitive a communication method for the kind of information that Mr. Brown had to impart. He had to reach his traveling companion in another way. Mr. Brown had to try to teach Al a new way of communicating.

OR A SPIRIAL,

Mr. Brown began the process by plugging into Al’s mind. (Izarian Internet!) and what a hideously barren emotional wasteland he was greeted with! He was sifting through the mire of a human consciousness, such that it was in 1996, looking for a way to give Al a message that he would know he could only have gotten from Mr. Brown! There was a window in Al’s consciousness, although it would only open sporadically. This was Mr. B’s window of vulnerability.

Mr. B was “scaling” his brain for a good seed, anything that would be annoying enough to capture the imagination of this primitive. He came upon Al’s memories of his youth and found that Al was 11 years old when he first saw the sea. He’d traveled with his family to Atlantic City. It was 1960. The sea was something Al hadn’t dreamt of, the expanse of it, the sheer bigness of it was a thing that never occurred to him. Climbing the hill in the family car, the horizon opened up the sky to him as if to compare itself with the sea. Maybe the sea was waiting for him, this panorama of the sky against the sea. It was one of those scenes where, although there were hoards of people littering the shore, (and I mean littering,) Al was captured by the grandeur of the sea, as if for the first time he had come in contact with everything life would ultimately end up meaning to him! As the car made the top of the hill, the horizon opened up and there it was, the sea! The ocean, played against the New Jersey sky and Al was thunderstruck!

At the time Al could not swim nevertheless he had a strong desire to launch himself off the sea wall which he did as soon as his parents were not looking. This proved to be a bit of a mistake because, since his parents were not looking, he was on his own, over the edge, floundering in the pee green of the water. He was panicked and he was elated at the same time. He was borne at last and the sea would be his surrogate mother. (He was also in deep shit with the old man.) The sea had not only captured his imagination, it captured his body as well. Had it not been for the docility of the sea, our intrepid dreamer would have surely perished. As our youth was fighting his fear of an unknown, the sea surrounded his young limbs, coaxing, beseeching him to become a part of the whole. As Al dove from the sea wall he expelled all the air that was in his lungs and with a splash, he sunk like a stone. Under the water he lashed out, imitating all the swimming type motions he knew. Although he was improvising splendidly, his eyes were closed and he was swimming straight to the bottom, which he promptly hit head first!

That’s when the earth farted, or sort of expelled gas. The flatulent earth would save this fledgling patron of the sea with a fart! That’s right folks, the sea spread its sandy crusted, barnacle ridden, crustacean encrusted salty ass and let one rip straight into the New Jersey atmosphere, (which had a negligible effect on the ozone layer but a lasting effect on our would be swimmer.) There’s a geological study somewhere, filed with the NSUP, (National Society of Unexplainable Phenomena) that documented such occurrences and had the information been wisely distributed this occurrence might have been predicted. Had this information been available at the time of our swimmers adventure Dad might have gone to Ocean City instead and while that might have served somewhat better in a Hollywood sort of way, Atlantic City or Rottenest Island; Al was stepping over the edge with the sea and there would be no turning back for him!

Only revealed in a piecemeal way to him, Al would be attracted to the sea in subtle ways, more and more till finally he would succumb to the obvious. Till this day Al had been an average boy; getting into a little trouble now and then, being mischievous and animated. A boy! He didn’t give too much grief to his parents till that day. Afterwards the ax would fall on their, till now, harmonious and loving relationship.

He was brought up in a small farming town and. Being a fairly conservative community, Al had led a rather sheltered life. The family had gone on road trips to Grandma’s house and to the lake with his relatives in the summer but other than that his world was one of church, school and sport. The tumultuous events of the day were discussed in school and were presented in a very partisan way. The news was something he and his friends were hardly interested in. It was something his parents would watch on TV and he would get bored and want to watch something with more action. War movies and historical movies were more to his liking. School was something he abided but he only asserted himself to keep his parents from withholding his few privileges. In 1960 half of America was sleeping and the other half was in the throws of a great social change. The people in his town were asleep, too deeply involved in making a way for themselves and their families to be very concerned with the events of the world and the changes that were taking place. This complacency would cause Al to rebel and alienate him from his family. Slowly he found that the things he learned in school were largely the opinions of the partially informed. He found himself journeying to school each day to consume the regurgitated and unquestioned “knowledge” of the docile sheep; teachers they were called, and then journeying home again to forget the whole thing. This education, he was told, was in preparation for something that would provide him with a livelihood when he became an adult although no-one could exactly tell him how diagramming a sentence would somehow land him that big job or enable him to re-build that carburetor. It didn’t seem to matter in this sleepy little town!

After Al’s introduction to the sea he began to swim. He became proficient and swam whenever he could. He lived in a farming town and in the summer he would bail hay for one of the local farmers. It paid $15 a day which, at the time was quite a bundle at the end of a six day week. Of course after bailing hay all day, Al was in no condition to do much of anything. It was back aching work for the young boy and the farmer he worked with was generous and kind. Al would drive the tractor for the afternoon because by then he was pretty much worn out. After work he would go to the pond and swim till dark. At school he joined the swim team and won metals for his ability. The coach told his father that he could be an Olympian if he applied his natural talents but Al had other things on his mind.

One day one of Al’s neighbors brought home a surfboard. Al had never seen one and was mystified. He’d seen magazines with people surfing on waves but couldn’t imagine what it would be like. He’d never seen a breaking wave but from that day on he searched out anything that had anything to do with surfing. He went to the local news agency and had the owner order a Surfer Magazine for him. Two weeks of going down to the news stand and finally it came. He wore that magazine out, spending hours staring at the pictures and trying to imagine how it was done.

Al’s mind began to grow in an artistically exponential way. The more he delved into the world outside his “tiny town” the more rebellious he became at home. Common story for teenagers in the year 1964. Things weren’t exactly “peaches and cream” at home anyway. There was a money issue in the flux of their families drama. Not an unusual malady in the human course of events. “A Domestic Dispute” is what they called it down at the police station and the police were involved quite often. There was yelling and breaking things and a general, shall we say, “upwelling of frustration.” It could be seen as a difficult place for a child to develop his identity. It could be called a condition resulting from the Industrial Military Complex’s effect on the lives of the working class at the outset of the Cold War in America. We could ignore it altogether as inconsequential in relationship with the development of the cosmos and humans relatively inconsequential part in that development. We might just brush over it and not talk about it at all! After all, humans do have the ability to ignore the interconnectedness of the universe and place themselves, despite what Galileo taught us, at the center.

As it was, Al was living in a sort of war zone/natural disaster and so, having found his rasion detre, he split! At first it was just to the local city, Philadelphia, where he learned some harsher ways that he was never exposed to in his home town. He traveled to swim meets there and soon made some friends there. He talked to his new friends and learned that the world was much more complicated than he had been led to believe. (Kids do that and it’s been my experience that they talk about things that are much more relevant than what the adults of the same society are talking about. Their politics are of discovery and comparison. The adult world offers them confrontation, judgment and rigidity.) It proved to be the nutrient of alienation for Al. He began to find new places to ”hang out” and new people to learn from. He started to come home later and later then, not at all! He still had some politics to deal with at home; “Dad’s coming home” or “the Chief of Police is coming to dinner to talk to the family about getting along better.” Had it not been for swimming, Al would have drowned!

Al’s mind did what even an omniscient like myself would not expect. Things had, what we call in the all seeing game, reached “transitional fluidity” which is not an occurrence that does it’s occurring very often and not with any predictability. All hell broke loose in my neck of the woods and I couldn’t answer my communicator for, well, a bit of time. Anyway, I got off the track again. Our intrepid geologically incarnate beast was drawn to the ocean like some sort of flash flood. There was this one day; his friends enticed him to take a trip with them to go surfing in New Jersey. He shared with them the desire to surf and they had spent hours talking about it, developing theories regarding it, they mimicked the stances that they saw in magazines, knew all the jargon, hero’s names, surfboard makers and models. He was what is called a horny virgin. Ripe!

The crew arrived at the beach at sunrise in somebody’s fathers stolen sedan. There it was, La Mar, like a silky yearning lover, the liquid satin of the sea, waiting. Al didn’t have a chance! When he saw those little peelers, he lost the plot! It was like some sort of incredible vacuum, as if the sea pulled him in and he would never escape again!

Mr. Brown had had enough of this! His mind began to wander. He thought of the Planet Procerpine and the great time he had there. He thought of the time he lost in that black hole while he was traveling through space: 100 years and he managed to get back to tell about it! He got off the track and flowed with it. The sea would have the answer and so he gave Al a look and dove off the side of the little vessel with Al looking on.

Al immediately reverted to panic mode but just long enough for it to provide him with the source for a good laugh. Of course this was an unexpected change; most change is unexpected! MAN OVERBOARD? No big deal? OK!

The currents of the seas were amazing to Mr. Brown. He could swim to the Cordillera and live in the sea till his rendezvous. The sea was his solace and the south Pacific was one of the firmament’s best. Through out heavens it was known as one of the most diverse, most unique the heavens had to offer.

Mr. Brown let his mind roam free as he was gliding through the deep blue of the warm South Pacific. He thought of all the stories that he’d learned of when he was preparing for this trip. He saw a group of dolphins and had a bit of a chat. They invited him to a tuna feed. Gracious he thought, but declined. Regretfully he had other engagements. He swam on.

He began to think of the first experiments on Earth and all the excitement it caused on Izaria. The great King Assurbanipal, later the Greeks would change his name to Sardanapalus, “the last Assyrian Kink,” a cross-dressing, bi-sexual vigilante riding the crest of a three thousand year old dynasty by chance met the subordinate of a Izarian mission; Oannes. If there were to be a biography written about Assurbanipal’s life: Shakespeare’s, A Comedy of Errors would be the perfect title. There was certainly something going on during his time but the King of the goat herder’s just couldn’t seem to put his finger on it! The fact that his countrymen had been laying waste to every neighbor they had for the last three thousand years did not seem to be any great cause for concern. He was one of those obviously self-indulgent despots that ignore all the signs, evoking the self-righteousness that blinded him to the truth. He built a library and set about gathering, which in his case was another word for stealing, all the works he and his court could find within his realm of influence.

Assurbanipal made a friend of a amphibian who arrived on the scene early during his reign. The Fish Man imparted all nature of information to Assur. This Izarian monitor was a bit of a jokester, as most Izarians are. He gave Assurbanipal one of the basic tenets of space travel, useless by itself but quite impressive to the leader of a country of illiterates. It came in the form of a number, a number that related to the amount of time relative to the Earth in seconds it would take the planet to end up in the same place where it started. For someone riding camels it didn’t mean much but for Assurbanipal it was pretty impressive, even though, to him, it didn’t mean a damn thing. It served to impress his friends and shore his failing ego.

His ego wasn’t the only thing that was failing, things were looking fairly grim for the sissy king; he was hated without as well as within his domain. All his neighbors gathered their forces together and planned an attack on his city/fortress. In response he hired some desert heathens from the north east to squash the uprising. The heathens took the payment as partial and joined the revolting hoards, helped destroy the city and took all that they could carry. Nineveh was laid to waste. As the sounds of the fighting reached the inner sanctum of the palace, Assurbanipal gathered all the wealth he could find and started a large fire in the center of the palace. He conscripted all his concubines and prostitutes, eunuchs and slaves and ordered them to strip down naked and jump into the raging flames where he joined them. This was the death of a civilization, (and a script for Nero a thousand years hence)!

The number was etched into some clay tablets and left in the Royal Library. A couple thousand years later the archaeologist Sir Austin Henry Layard found the blasted thing and thought he was pretty clever as well; after all, he found evidence humans possessing superior intelligence in the middle of the desert. He uncovered evidence of a civilization that no-one knew existed. The number was largely ignored because no-one could make any sense of it. The brilliant minds of England thought it a curious object and placed it with all reverence in safekeeping; fully documented and thoroughly ignored. It laid there for a hundred years before the thread was picked up again.

So far the number was just that, a number. It was a number in the trillions. Perhaps it was some psychics reckoning of what the international deficit would be by the year 2000. He wouldn’t have been too far off! One hundred and ninety five trillion, nine hundred and fifty five billion, two hundred million. (195,955,200,000,000). Perhaps it was the number of Assyrians it took to screw in a light bulb, no, the number of times the politicians of the world had lied to gain profit, or the number of notes in the long playing version of John Coletraine’s, A LOVE SUPREME, no no! It is the number of Earth seconds it takes the heavenly bodies in our to firmament return to their original location; very handy tool if you are a space traveler and especially if you can travel near the speed of light. At the time it was presented to the ‘Right Honorable Assurbanal’ it was two things; First, giving it to ‘Assurbanal’ it was like giving a copy of the current hypothesis on Quantum Physics in Chinese to the two year old son of a Mexican brick maker, Second, for the Izarian prankster it was just plain foresight! Back in those days the Izarians were very confident about the outcome of this project on Earth. Things had changed since then.

Unfortunate but true, the only thing the humans had been able to do with their ever expanding brains was to have ever expanding conflicts! Justified like a hit man justifies murder, a child takes the cake or for that matter, private landholding. Crusaders, all the way through to the humanitarians; wars were justified, made into science, studied, planned, even embraced as righteous! Righteousness is not matter but that wasn’t the issue! Human's pre-occupation with the insecurity of freedom and how to squash its existence under the dubious safety of the umbrella of possession was not something that was going to be easily dealt with. These Izarians have their hands full trying to change these yahoos!

Miscegenation was already in place. The deed had been done and now there seems to be a clear division between the artificially evolving and the naturally evolving. There were people who had to be near water and there were people that had no need of it, even a phobia of it. It was the need to be near water that was the undeniable trait left by the Izarian ancestors. This was the stuff that was coursing through every mariner and surf bum the world wide. Fisherman and fish mongers, weekend boaters, river rats and Norwegian ice water plungers; they all had some “scales under their skin.” They were visited by dreams that were literally out of this world. They were breeding and inter-breeding a whole new race and although it would take centuries upon centuries to develop, it was indelible! It was an evolutionary inevitability!

The effects of this miscegenation were undeniable, at least to the likes of a Mr. Brown type. It was something you wouldn’t notice unless you had been making observations for a long time. Mr. Brown had been on the planet for the past five hundred years and that was a relatively short period of time in relation to the length of the entire experiment. Still, Mr. Brown had been born and bred in an environment of this study. His biological parents visited this planet centuries before him. He, like them, had become a Astroarcheologisty and had studied the records of the Izarian Experiment. The changes were obvious to his trained eye. He was looking at them from a purely scientific point of view. He was the current monitor and enjoyed his charge.

It was beginning to get light again. Mr. B had been in the ocean all night, trying to think of a seed he could plant in Al’s thick boned skull. From the look in Al’s eye when Mr. B took the plunge, Al was a bit concerned but he wasn’t starring in any attention drama! Al was busy thinking of questions and then his mind was remembering the answers, one after the other. The dream seed that Mr. B planted in his head the night they met had done its work. His mind was changing itself. All it took was a reminder, a nudge. Al was busy.

Al stood at the helm till around sunset. That’s when the running lights came on. He’d never noticed them among all the debris strewn about the boat. Just before they came on there was a big whirring sound that seemed to come from the cabin on the second deck. By then Al had realized that the boat was running itself. He realized a couple of other things then too; for instance, Mr. B didn’t seem too fussed about running the boat like most captains would be. He would stand behind the wheel now and then but just as casually he would walk away from the thing and leave it to itself. The boat seemed to steer itself, never veering off course with a strong wind, never varying more than 5 degrees from 120 degrees ESE. Al let go of the wheel to see what happened. Nothing! Al took the wheel and gave it good half turn. Nothing happened. He stood there for a minute and stared a hole in the door that the whirring sound was coming from. He was beginning to feel like it was time for a change; his new catch word. Standing behind this wheel for the better part of a day, as if he had an important task at hand, when in reality he was more like steering one of those kids car seats that his mom hung over the seat in the car with that little plastic steering wheel and the little plastic squeeze horn. Beep, beep! Al spun the wheel and headed toward the door where all the whirring was coming from. He decided to have a look.

(I’d like to say a word about fruit flies. As most crawly beast that come under the gun of the Human species, fruit flies have been maligned and genetically battered by humans, beings that are not much smarter than themselves, considering their brain capacity. Fruit flies provide a valuable service, they eat rotten fruit. Nobody else is goina’ hang around in a hot Mango orchard all day and eat rotten Mangos. It’s a thankless job but unfortunately fruit flies are not blessed with the capacity to tell rotten fruit from not rotten fruit. This inevitable annoyance is the premise that humankind evokes so that they might mutate their DNA and make them all sterile, destroying the whole lot. Why not alter their DNA so that they can tell the difference? It can’t be any harder than betting that random flies that are blessed with the sterilized DNA will be the most prolific of the rest and decimate the whole species through sterilization. Smart flies, you could call them! They only eat rotten fruit or under ripe fruit.

Al felt a bit pensive about going in that door on the second deck, but the sound that was coming from that room was so out of place on this antique of a boat. Since Al had discovered that the boat was running itself and since Mr. Brown had, for all intents and purposes, “Abandoned Ship,” as it were, Al felt compelled to find out all he could about this ship of fools.

He climbed the step ladder and walked to the door. He reached for the handle and could feel the vibration coming through it. The vibration startled him. He let go and took a step back, regarding the door intently for the first time. The door looked like it had been painted countless times. New layers had peeled away in the sun to reveal the outlandish color of choice its previous designer had chosen. Here and there, where the door had been banged or dented he could see the many layers that had been covered by still another color. Too many colors to count, peeling back to reveal still another!

Al reached for the handle again and pushed. He pushed harder, and harder. It wouldn’t budge. Then he pulled the handle. It didn’t move, not as if it were locked, but as if it wasn't a door at all. He put his ear to the door and listened. He could hear the hum of something there. He was convinced that the sound was coming from just behind that door! He pulled the handle again and there was a hissing sound, like a bottle filled with a carbonated drink makes when it's opened. Then the door swung open suddenly and Al fell back with its swing and fell on his ass! There it was! It was a ball of water that seemed to be spinning inside itself very rapidly! He could feel its power, like being close to a very large gyroscope, the power of it drawing him in somehow. He tried to see inside it, as if it were some sort of liquid crystal ball, spinning within itself. Although it was not contained by any solid container, it remained within itself, not splashing out on to the deck, not a drop! Al got up from the deck and stepped closer for a better look. It was just water, smooth as glass and perfectly round! He could see nothing inside. He reached out to touch its surface. To his touch it drew him in, pulling powerfully, and Al pulled his finger away! He shut the door and walked back down to the main deck, quite shaken now. He was beginning to realize that this boat and Mr. Brown were not just an overtly eccentric duo!

It was a clear night, the sun setting into the sea with a green flash, like the red in molten steel when it's submerged into water, dulling its brightness to orange, then gray. He sat on the bow of the boat and watched the darkness of the night lift the curtain on the stars. He began to pace the deck, as much as he could pace with all the clutter about. His mind was bouncing back and forth like a ball bearing in gasoline tanker going down a bumpy dirt road! The ideas within his of stream of consciousness rendering some surprising ideas had been transformed by spring thaw and the stream had become a torrent. He vacillated between reveling in the freedom of this unknown to admonishing himself for being such a drawn in putz and back again! His rational mind, or that fraction of his mind that entertained rational thought had “fluffed up the pillows,” but it was an un-used room. He walked over to the beer locker and opened a fresh one. The first in 4 days. He found the hammock and got comfortable. Gazing up at the stars, his mind quieted down. Another beer and the hammock grew claws and dragged Al off to sleep. He wrestled with the wind that night. The boat was listing and the wind began to howl. He was tossing and turning and couldn’t seem to get comfortable but he never woke up! The whirring of the seawater gyro was drowned out by the clatter of Mr. Browns floating cultural gallery in the windy night. Yes, Al was tossing and turning and got a little wet but this wasn’t a dream, at least this time. He never did wake up that night and the storm subsided. Things calmed down, at least for the moment. It seems that whenever things seem to calm down for a moment, there’s an irresistible force getting ready to “pitch the wrench,” into the works that is.

A NARROW POINT OF VIEW

They pulled into Southern Colombia at the harbor of Tumaco. It was desolate, it was alien, it was a couple hundred klicks from the Equator. Robinson Crusoe might have been here a hundred years ago along with a long list of scallywags, ner-do-wells and other societal vermin that frequents such harbors. They were all still there! They’d changed their costumes and occupations but the edge was still there; drug dealers and middle men, fidgeting and nervous body guards and suspicious loiterers, dried out dime store hookers and their younger counter-parts, usually a daughter or younger sister, amphetamine pilots smoking endless non-filter cigarettes with their hands rummaging about in their pockets, looking for something they’d forgotten they’d located only moments before, shopkeepers with one eye on the gun under the counter and one eye on that convex mirror in the corner, mangy dogs with their tails tucked tightly between their legs and anorexic cats lurking in the edge of alley shadows, scanning for a overlooked scrap of sustenance.

Hardly a word was spoken between Al and Mr. Brown in the two weeks that had transpired. They didn’t see much of each other. Mr. Brown spent most of his time behind the “multi-Colored door.” It had gotten to the point with their relationship that both knew that it was pointless to speak. They would look at each other and know.

Al had become mesmerized and mute. He knew there was something other worldly about Mr. Brown when he met him back at Roca Blanca. He’d seen him dive into the ocean and not surface for hours at a time. He’d seen the painted door and what lie behind, the sail boat that drives itself, the solar barbecue that works in the dark, The Almera Circle! Trouble was, every time he began to give in to his anxt he would fall into the dream state. AAAAAAAAA !”Subsequently he would dream he was beneath the sea swimming without a care of breathing! It was a long trip, during which Al seemed to develop a sleeping disorder. Mr. Brown was reminded of the first human to visit his planet, (and the last), Nez. That’s another story. This was a dream that Al rather liked having. He loved swimming for hours and had long since been given to trusting Mr. Brown with his life. Up until they reached Tumaco, Al was on a cruise yacht sailing the south seas without a worry. On arriving in Columbia, Al was suddenly drawn back into reality, the reality of the twentieth century human condition. As soon as Al took one step on the land all his fear and anxiety returned in a flood. He was not happy to be in Tumaco as Mr. B knew he would not be. There would be no slipping back into a dream state here.

There was a lesson that was to be learned in the eyes of these children. Dirt encrusted and barely dressed, they were like the dried out barnacles on a shipwrecked boat, weak and timidly hanging on to the little life that they had left within them. Like Kiplings old women with their impossible loads of wood, almost invisible in “Marrakech,” these children went about their tasks without identity, like zombies waiting for the inevitable, death. Their lot in life was inmutable and in their innocence, was crushed any hope, not the barest glimpse of hope!

This was the world that greed had built and Al was repulsed by it. The old saying was that “greed was as old as the hills. ”The fact of the matter was that the hills were much older! Greed didn’t show its ugly head till the seeds of insecurity had germinated. I suspect it came about as a result of Early humans who competed for food because they chose to live where it was scarce or the population grew out of proportion with the amount of food that could be gathered. Greed developed rather slowly because humans did and still do not have a propensity for compromise, especially when they are hungry. With the advent of compromise came the fetus of the current corporation, government and religion.

The denial of the malignancy was through. There were, by this time very few corners of human existence that had managed to exist without greed being an integral part. The rich embraced it and the poor succumbed to it. It had become a cornerstone of the existence of humankind. By 1996 it had been marketed as Democracy, the price of freedom. It was selling like hot cakes! Almost everyone had gotten on the boat, stacked like Rugby players in a scrum; "where three men try to shove two men’s heads up one mans ass!” Most everyone was part of the game!

With this mass denial came other denials. Complementing doctrines were adopted that purposefully delineated the elite more and more and drove the majority of people into poverty. Tumaco was hardly unusual in the scheme of human existence but where in the world was? Mr. Brown and Al went there to buy supplies.

Having spent the last two weeks in dreamland, this experience was like a bucket of cold water in the face of a sleeping man. He avoided their eyes and turned away from looking deeper at their condition.

Mr. Brown had been in Tumaco many times before and knew that things would not change for a long time to come, here, or for that matter, the world over. Even in the most opulent of civilization’s metropolis there was to be found destitution and hopelessness. He knew that Al was embarrassed by this; ashamed. He did not create this, but he felt the responsibility that all humans share in it although not all of them feel the pang!

To Al it was a repulsive episode in an so far idyllic voyage and as the two made their way back to the boat Mr. Brown could feel the shame of it ebbing from his companion. With all their empathy and good intention, humans still could not escape the bonds of insecurity. “The better him than me” attitude still prevailed over the “one for all and all for one” one! Their systems were set up, based on natural law with a capitalistic twist; the survival of the fittest; as if the human psyche collected together, like lemmings in a single madman who wants to fly and knows the effect of gravity so climbs to the top of a cliff to jump off; he knows he’ll fly, or like a drowning blindman surrounded by other drowning blindmen and pushing each other under in their attempt to save themselves, never seeming to realize, to sense, that calm will be the first step in their quest for salvation.

Al had calmed down to a certain extent but there was still a long way to go before the “blindman” in him could see, before he could “fly” and not suffer the crippling effects of abruptly stopping! Mr. Brown sensed that it would not be a very long time, that this human was ripe for the change, had become free from the fear of it!

Loaded with supplies, the two travelers made their way back to their vessel and prepared to depart the little port. Course heading would be west, south west, 210 degrees, just off the coast of Ecuador and then due west just to the south of the Galapagos Islands and into the great Pacific, via the Peru Current. There would be no land fall for the next few months and during this time Al’s dreams would find a new home in reality. He would assume a new attitude as he learned more about Mr. Brown and his origin.

After a tensely comical argument between the harbor master, Juancho Contreras Fontes III and Mr. Brown, the perplexed Ecuadorian Harbormaster left the boat, waving his hands and muttering to himself. Mr. Brown chose to speak Latin to the man, which gave Mr. Brown the appearance of being Catholic. Initially that gave the harbor master the impression that Mr. B was some sort of Evangelist from Ireland and Al his apprentice. The Harbor Master was quite taken with the eccentricity of the old man. (Mr. Brown had opened a bottle of some Russian Vodka that they both drank as if it were water.) He kept hinting that Mr. Brown should pay him some money for harbor fees so Mr. B gave him a handful of money; none of it was from Equator, in fact, much of it was from countries that no longer existed! Finally the man left the boat waving his arms in frustration and talking to himself with a pocket full of what he thought were worthless coins. Later, it turned out, they were ancient in origin and were worth a small fortune but that’s another story!

ON A SEA OF DOUBT

The two unlikely voyagers left the harbor and set out to sea, traveling west south west into the Peru Current and just south of the Galapagos Islands. It was an eventless passage in terms of the weather, the wind and the sea were all going the same way. The little boat tossed and rolled with the massive waves like a floating bazaar somewhere in Asia. The wind was not too heavy and they had good weather; sunny in the day time and clear starry nights, warm and serene!

In the morning, Mr. Brown would be stand at the helm and feign steering for a while. Al would read a bit in his hammock, (The boat was loaded with books!) Then Al would drift off to sleep. Mr. Brown would generally be gone when Al woke. Night would fall with Al on the boat alone, drifting along on “auto-pilot.” When Al woke up in the morning Mr. Brown would be at the helm again.

Sometimes in the morning Mr. Brown would launch himself over the side and return with one fish or another. They’d cook the fish and Mr. Brown would tell a tale, presented in several foreign languages. Al seemed to understand the gist of the story by the tone of Mr. Brown’s voice. The stories were grandiose and always embellished with several tangible aids; like maps and various artifacts. The reason that Al could get the gist of Mr. Browns stories was that they were all based in common historical teachings of the time. Al knew the names and was able to decipher them from Mr. Browns renditions. Mr. B told stories ranging from Cortez to Pope Gregory and he seemed to be personally familiar with all of them. Unfortunately many of the stories were lost on Al because the language was broken and sporadic and the stories conveyed with a sense of high comedy, rendering the long suffered heroes in a buffoonish light.

Take for example, the story of Sir Francis Drake. Of course it depends on which authority you talk to but according to Izarian documents he was a bit of a wanker, a benevolent thief who manipulated the Machiavellian tendencies of the English aristocracy in order to satisfy his hunger for vengeance from the Spanish. During that time the current deity, Jesus Christ was being re-defined, warped or otherwise manipulated by all the western civilizations for their personal glorification and that issue was the impetus for Drake’s hatred. No matter what colors you use to paint that picture, it ends up smelling of dung! Of course there were others; take for instance the great Western Thinker, Immunul Kant. Here’s a guy, the father of Pragmatism, who never left the town he was born in. (A deep thinker with no experiences.) Mr. Brown mixed his name in with Jefferson and Benedict Arnold, the infamous traitor. There were others, Marco Polo and the Great Montezuma, there were casts of characters that would fill volumes, libraries and the stories he told had the ring of truth to them making the history Al knew suspect. Mr. B spoke of them as though they were old friends, people he was intimate with. He would talk about their lives as though they were intertwined, centuries removed from one another yet a part of the other.

Although his impatience compelled him to continue asking questions of Mr. Brown, the unbridled truth was unfolding itself to Al in his dreams and he found he had less and less questions to ask. Al had yet to breach the subject of what was behind “Door # 1.” It would have been a waste of time at any rate because Mr. Brown wasn’t answering any questions or, if he was, the answers were in another language. The first week or so were spent like that.

Galapagos is about one thousand miles west of Equator, and, strangely enough, just south of the equator; a place Equator managed to straddle. Galapagos is a place that holds special significance for certain human beings in both scientific and religious circles of the western cultures. Seems a fellow from England sailed there a couple hundred years ago and made some observations regarding the Origin of Man that set the whole world on its sedentary ear. Mr. Brown started one of his nightly stories with his name, and this time in English! This caught the undivided attention of Mr. Al Fwada and set the course of the conversation for the night.

Mr. Brown had met Darwin in 1835 and ran into him and his entourage a few more times during Darwin’s circumnavigation. Mr. Brown talked about it like Darwin was a child in a strangers darkened closet; describing the contents of that closet to the owner outside, Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown met Darwin much the way he’d met many of his acquaintances on Earth, while at sea. As you could expect though, there was a twist. Mr. Browns little ship was spotted on the horizon by the crew of the Beagle and were ordered to turn to. Thats when they spotted the old man in the sea. (Mr. B was out for a swim again.) He was brought on board and taken to the captain. Mr. Brown recorded that the captain stunk badly and was in need of a dip in the sea himself. Darwin came from below deck to see what the commotion was all about. He managed to get Mr. Brown alone and have a chat with him while the Beagle made way towards the other boat, Mr. B’s. The conversation, as recounted by Mr. Brown was mostly in the Kings English and a bit of Spanish. Darwin was an inquisitive man and had a pot full of questions as travelers often do. True to his character, Mr. Brown laughed his questions off and began with some questions of his own. The conversation found its way to evolution, a subject Mr. Brown was well versed in. He launched into a diatribe regarding the geological and evolutionary history of Earth. It was a private conversation. Darwin was doing alot of listening and Mr. Brown, in his animated way, was explaining and clarifying some of the things that Darwin was having trouble with. They chatted for a few hours, meanwhile, the crew of the Beagle found that they were making no headway in their effort to come in contact with the other boat. The news was brought to Darwin’s cabin. Mr. Brown was told he would have to remain on board till they reached their next landfall. Mr. Brown brushed the information aside with a laugh. The conversation lasted well into the night. Darwin was fascinated by this stranger and his unique and, at the time, revolutionary concepts. He’d never heard or read anything like it. The man spoke with such lucidity and obvious deliberation, his ideas were so neatly arranged and easy to understand that once Darwin got past the fact that the man was nothing more than a sea faring vagabond, his intrigue was piqued. They shared a bit of Rum with dinner and Darwin fell off to sleep in the wee hours of the morning, his mind engaged in the his first set of “Vulcan Tennis!” When he woke, Mr. Brown and the mysterious boat on the horizon were gone!

Al was not surprised at the glib way that Mr. B revealed, as casually as a Thai says, “ swat-dii kha,” the fact that he was Izarian and,“ not of this world.” He said it to Al as if Al knew he was an alien all along, (as if he couldn’t be anything else). It was an awkward realization for Al because Al had to hide the fact that it hadn’t occurred to him before. Al felt a wave of insecurity wash over him because things were not as they seemed. He looked at the Painted Door and then at Mr. Brown. It was true! Mr. Brown; Izarian! “Damm Al, even the fruit flies know that!”

Al was visibly stunned. Mr. B was smiling like a camel just before it spits on you, like a adversary does just before he finishes you off; “ a shot to the solar plexus, one under the chin and the finisher right on the button!” Al was “on the ropes,” he was staggering. He looked at the door. As he got up, he waved Mr. B’s frolicsome taunts off and stumbled to the painted door. As he rose he lifted his arm, pointing towards it. The little boat was rocking to the rhythm of the sea. Al’s legs turned to jello, as if he’d been hit with a pipe wrench. Of all the questions that had come into his mind and had found their way to his lips, this was the one conclusion that he dared not draw! He suspected that Mr. B was “out of this world.” It was a suspicion that he brushed off again and again. His mind was in denial. Mr. Brown hit him with the “cold fish of reality right across his complacent mind!”

He stumbled to the door and pulled it open with a whoosh! There it was, the liquid orb, the crystal ball of water. Mr. Brown sat with his arms folded as if to say, “Ok, now what?” and watched as Al pointed at the thing, all the while looking at Mr. Brown, as if he were thinking, “it’s time to do a bit of explaining.” Experience being the best teacher, Mr. B got up and walked over to Al and the gyro and stepped in. He was gone! Al watched as Mr. Brown seemed to split into segments and melt into this object, bit by bit. Al looked closer at the ball and could make out the silhouette of Mr. Browns shape inside the orb. It was haunting like some sort of embryonic sac. Through the liquid Al could see Mr. B was smiling and motioning for Al to follow. Al was filled with the same sort of anxt that a first time parachutist experiences just before he jumps. He was terrified of being confined and he was unsure about what to expect, he didn’t want to drown and he wasn’t sure that he could get back out either! It was a giant step for him to take well outside his experience. He hesitated. Mr. B kept motioning him to come along in that underwater slow motion way. Al gathered his moxy, summoned his cajones and reached over toward the object. He put his finger against it as he’d done before. He could feel the suction of it and held his hand there, watching. His hand seemed to vanish into bits where he was touching the thing and he pulled his hand away again. His mind had convinced him to board the plane, to dawn the parachute and to step to the open door. There was only one thing left for him to do. He stepped in!

His mind drifted for a moment. He felt he was in another of his underwater dreams and felt a wave of relief wash over him, cleansing him of his fear and giving him a respite of calm. His eyes were open and he could see his reflection and that of Mr. Browns next to him in the concave reflection. Outside he could see the aft deck of the boat and the sea beyond. Till now he’d kept his mouth shut and was holding his breath. Mr. Brown touched his shoulder to get his attention. Al looked at him and Mr. Brown was motioning for him to breath. Al was holding his mouth closed so tight he could have dented steel. Slowly he relaxed, ever so slowly! He had to close his eyes to open his mouth. It was a transition that took several minutes. Finally, with the coaxing of Mr. B he managed it and sat back and relaxed. He was breathing normally! He opened his eyes and looked around.

The orb wasn’t state of the art hardware by Izarian standards, far from it; it was just primitive Neuronetics in Izaria. Mr. Browns mission wasn’t so important to warrant using the more sophisticated equipment that was available on his planet, still it was well out of this world! The Izarians had been tailor making neurons for a couple hundred thousand years. They were electronically impulsed and synthetic at first; antique, even archaic by their current standards. Mr. Brown’s orb was a state of the art system when Oannes was sporting around after his first voyage. In his day they already could make living neurons and by the time Oannes made it to the scene, they had vehicles made of the stuff. The orb was one such vehicle.

The Izarians developed a method of cultivating living neurons that would emit certain chemicals within a controlled medium. These chemicals would effect only specific receptors inside of the medium and by doing so, perform very specific tasks, like the human brain. It was a quantum leap in the mechanization of computer science from any humans point of view. The first such brains were clumsy and only useful for certain tasks. They had problems with brain cells mutating and mal-functioning. Mr. Brown wasn’t forced to deal with all that nonsense. Things had advanced beyond that by his time and even in this old sod of an intelligence, he’d been blessed with a certain level of sophistication.

The orb worked with uncanny ease. The manipulator, Mr. Brown in this case, would merely sit inside the brain and concentrate on what he wanted to happen. The intelligence would use that as a benchmark, using all the other available factors from other impetus to make the appropriate choices that were flexible from moment to moment. Other than that, the brain worked perfectly. From Al’s point of view, it was like being in a acrylic bathysphere, like the ones they’d made of wine barrels during the American Revolutionary War. This one was made of water.

Al could see their reflection on the concave surface of the orb and had sensed that the rocking of the boat had stopped while he had his eyes closed. Now, with his eyes opened, he could see that they were under the water. He looked up and saw the bottom of the boat just above them, traveling in the same direction and moving at the same speed with the current of the sea.
Mr. Brown seemed to be in deep thought, as if he were meditating. Al realized he was just along to observe and didn’t feel secure enough with this new environment to talk. He was still very concerned as to how he was managing to breath under water at all! They were traveling about 20 meters under the boat and Al saw the sea as he’d never seen it before. It wasn’t like scuba diving without it’s inherent confinement; he felt more at ease, as if he were watching the whole thing from a liquid hammock. The fish went about their business without the least alarm that they normally displayed when a human being enters their domain. Slowly the capsule rose in the sea and found its way back into the boat. Mr. Brown nudged Al to get out and, simple as that, he stepped out and was back on deck. Mr. Brown followed. The experience was indelible for Al. A new feeling of excitement filled him with anticipation. What would be the next discovery? What other things did Mr. B have to reveal to him. Mr. Brown shut the Painted door and walked to the helm. He stood silent.

WITH A FOREIGN MAP

In silence they sailed. The same routine prevailed although Mr. Brown no longer flitted about the boat like a monkey. He’d taken on a distant air, his mind traveling home long before his body. Al knew there would be other lessons to be learned from this man but was not anxious with anticipation. He felt that he’d found out more than he could possibly grasp already. He began to read voraciously anything he could find on the boat, in both English and Spanish. He also began to write and Mr. Brown showed him how to use another one of his gadgets, a sort of a word processor that he’d modeled after the Russian carriage typewriter he had laying on board. Mr. Brown had books on subjects far and wide, mostly concerning the sciences. Evolution seemed to be the favorite subject, that is there were more books about that subject than all the others combined. Mr. Brown provided guidance in this area. He weeded out the mis-leading volumes, and lead Al to the ones that were closer to the fact of the matter. It was enlightening for Al. As his education expanded, his understanding of history and the fallacies that he’d come to believe replaced each other, like oil replaces water; the more substantial replacing the less.

As Al studied, the boat made it’s way past the Galapagos Islands, that errie archipelago where Darwin had his test of faith and civilization buried their fairy tale of creation. They sailed south into the Peru Current; that oceanic river, created by rain runoff flowing off the land mass of the Andes mountain range plunging into the sea, causing a distinct river. The color of the sea goes from green to deepest blue just west of the archipelago. They were sailing just south of the Equator. The water was warm and the weather was fine for the time being. Two weeks went by without a blink. Mr. Brown and Al became closer. They ate fish which found it’s way into a pan less and less. They discussed the existence of man and the fatal direction civilization seemed to be taking. They talked about the alternatives that humankind had at their disposal. Al was struck at the clarity and lucidity that his amphibian friend expressed himself. No cultural overtones or political boundaries encumbered his evaluations. No religious boundaries were too sacred to discount as inconsequential, and as Aristotle pointed out, not valid! Even emotion, humankind’s most guarded illogical premise was neatly arranged in the “all revealing light” of his rapier mind, and reduced to the weak, superstitiously overridden encumbrance that it had become. At first these witticisms came in short spurts, like a whales breathing while their on the surface. An hour or more after Al had asked a question Mr. Brown would make his speech. He’d always assume a dramatic pose, as if he were in one of Willys plays;

“once I stood upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.”

(He really liked Shakespeare!) Sometimes he rendered it like some political rhetoric performed by a candidate who didn’t believe what he was saying. “Freedom has no sponsor!” he would say, and would then go back to busying himself with whatever he was busy with. He was hysterical (and/but) the message; the message was clear. He was making a spoof, taking the piss and blatantly mimicking the over dramatic theatrical devises that salespeople and politicians use. Later he would expound that, “Freedom has yet to find its way into the arms of love,” posing as a bird in flight with his arms wrapped around the Mermaid that served as the prow of the boat and the halyard stay. Laughing, he fell into the sea and Al would see him the next morning, steering the boat.

As the days went by these aphorisms became more prosaic and less dramatic till Al could make sensible links with the things that Mr. Brown had said previously. Mr. Brown waxed philosophically for about three weeks and the weather held. One day he came out from behind the painted door Al was deeply engrossed in his studies and didn’t notice that Mr. B was tidying the ships decks; gathering loose objects and stowing them. It was a strange sight for Al when he looked up and saw Mr. B actually cleaning the place up. He’d never seen Mr. B pick up a thing before and now, this action appeared as if Mr. Brown was moving out of “their apartment.” Change! Al got up from his books and asked Mr. Brown what was the occasion? Quite out of the ordinary, Mr. Brown answered him directly, “the southern storm cycle has begun and we’re in for some nasty weather. I haven’t made contact with my ride home but they must be nearby. I’ve just set the heading for 230 degrees south west into the outer shelf of the Cordillera Basin veering south at 127 degrees west. The storm tracks will be arriving within two weeks and we should be able to stay close to the correct quadrant within this area.”

It was relatively calm and Mr. Brown realized the importance of Al keeping a cool head during the next month or so. He sat Al down implying that he was willing to explain the situation and answer any questions he might have. Al, true to his character, was bursting! He realized that the orb behind the painted door was the control center, but he’d never heard of the Cordillera Basin and he didn’t know where they were heading up to now. Mr. Brown took out some maps and showed Al the general area that they would be in, as if, at some point he wouldn’t be around any longer. Mr. Brown explained to Al how to manipulate the orb and how to access the maps and navigational aids that the information center held and what to do with that information. He told Al that he should spend half of each waking day in the orb and to study and commit to memory as much of that information as he could. He suggested that he sleep there. There wouldn’t be much more time that Mr. Brown could field his questions. Mr. Brown also told him that at some point he would be gone and that the boat would be his and he should be careful not to let the vessel fall into government hands. That after he got proficient with the hardware, the boat would not fail him.

There were another couple of days of balmy weather and Mr. B and Al prepared for the worse. As they worked at getting the vessel ready, Al asked all the questions he could think of; questions about Mr. Browns life on Izaria, how far it was from Earth, what life was like there. Mr. Brown answered these questions as best he could and Al listened but he had no experience to base what Mr. B was telling him and so much of what he was told was too far outside of his experience to make any sense to him. He had the interest but felt baffled by what he was being told. He asked Mr. Brown what course he had set and what he could do to help with the navigation.

Al said that whenever he tried to change the course of the intelligence it would not respond. Mr. B told him that he couldn’t change those coordinance. He said Al’s attempts had been evaluated and were going to work after he’d relinquished the controls to him. Before I leave this planet you will be skipper of this vessel. Al finally got around to the important question; “Why are you sharing all this information with me?” To this question Mr. Brown could only say, “When the time comes, the reason will become obvious to you and you’ll know what to do and how to do it.” The adventure had begun! Al fell silent. He dove into the challenge with all his passion. He spent more time in the orb concentrating on committing to memory all the information that he could. He stayed inside the orb, manipulating the brain and becoming proficient with it. Hardly a word was spoken between the two till they were well within the eye of the storm!

The orb had all manner of information regarding the Planet Earth and it’s history. Al absorbed all he could of this subject and the light it shed on what he’d been taught as a boy. He began to realize how very nationally partisan nationalized history is. Weighed against what he’d learned in the hallowed halls of various learning institutions, this information rendered that learning hysterical. He began to feel very cynical and bitter, like the victim of an outrageous lie. As this bitterness grew the seeds of anger sprouted in his stomach till they began to choke him. He became lethargic. Began drinking and sleeping in the hammocks. It was a couple of days before Mr. Brown noticed this change in Al. When he did, he felt sorry for the primitive. Such ideas and feelings were unthinkable to Mr. Brown. They were studied and contained in his society, brought to their knees and revealed for the debilitating non-sense they were. There, the motive was removed and the malignancy simply went away! He realized that here on Earth this behavior was nobelized. Bravery and pride were fortified by the societal mores. Al had been taught to react like this and he was. He’d long knew that the world had been turned into a big con game. After a hard look at what an outsider had to report about the human condition, Al saw reason to be despondent. Mr. Brown realized that he had to initiate a plan that would enable Al to come to the conclusion that he controlled the parameters of his lot in life, a revelation he’d have to come to on his own .

Humans had the propensity to make changes without direction. This, combined with the other stumbling blocks; money, religion and insecurity, made for a very unpredictable fare, shall we say, “soup sandwich.” This untidy tid-bit was causing all kinds of ugly situations for the rest of the non-human inhabitant’s of the planet. They were an independent sort and tended to keep to themselves. The human element disturbed age old rites, decimated them, and now had the rest of the natural world on the run. One by one the most conspicuous of these competitors were brought down, captured and put into zoos or killed outright! From an objective point of view it was a despicable scenario and humans had taken the distinctly villainous lead. Al had just cause to feel as he did, for there was very little an individual could by this time. Freedom, under the guise democracy was more of a romantic idea by 1996. Freedom had been deformed by social graces and the parameters were growing smaller each day. This was the world that had been left to Al Fwada and his generation.

Many creative minds of this generation, indeed, of all the modern times had been haunted by this feeling of hopelessness. The would indulge there idyllic worlds in their art and, when they would be confronted with the real world, they would dive beneath the oblivion of drugs or other idleness. It had caused the pre-mature deaths of many a talent, often where the mind dies well before the body. Puerto Escondido was rife with these types as were many bohemian outposts. Al could become one of these restless souls, had he not already been one. Despite all this, Mr. Brown believed that he could plant a seed in Al’s mind and cause a transformation that would make his journey through life a brighter one, as well a dramatically more exciting one.

FROM A PAST NOT SO DIFFRENT FROM NOW

There was a new satellite circling the earth. It first appeared on a radar screen in a NASA space station in Hawaii on Haleakala, Maui. The information was sent to Houston and the entire network of stations round the world was contacted.

The identification of this object was unknown and was being monitored as it orbited the planet. This was not an unusual occurrence but each time it happened the insecurity systems of each country wanted to know from every other country if they had launched anything into the atmosphere, like a nuclear war head like for example. It was always a time for nervous evaluation; “can we trust this information?” Far above the planet, the object floated placidly while the communication centers of the planet chatted nervously between themselves. They sent radio signals toward the object but there was no response. They made efforts to determine what the object was made of and how it managed to come into orbit around the planet. It was all for naught. The Izarians knew all about the technological advances that had been made on the planet Earth and were not in the least concerned with their war machine. They had their own mission and whatever the human element might decide, it would have little effect on them. Meanwhile they were observing the storm cycles of the Southern Pacific and then playing them against probability in an effort to determine where the best place to land was and make their pick up. They’d yet to make contact with Mr. Brown but they had a couple of months before the scheduled rendezvous so there was no rush.

ANOTHER BARDO

Back on the boat Al had begun to spend more time in the orb. The smile that used to be on his face had turned to a smirk and he had assumed a new attitude; one of “devil may care.” It was a chemically induced attitude that Al had picked up in the orb. Mr. Brown changed the chemical make-up of the water inside of the orb and that chemical was producing a different balance in Al’s brain. As a result he was coming out of his depression and was blessed with a fresh attitude. Although he was a bit more cynical, he was no longer suffering from bouts of hopelessness. It happened quickly and all Mr. Brown had to do was make some adjustments in the orb and then convince Al to spend a bit of time there. Their previous pursuit took on a new enthusiasm. Al was no longer complacent to sit about and wait for something to happen to him. He was in the process of learning and evaluating his position so he could act!

The memory of the orb was truly extensive. There was information from all over the galaxy as well as the history of many worlds. The Izarians had been just about everywhere and were great voyeurs. They were a passive race, choosing to use their minds instead of their physical power, both of which were considerable. When Al started to absorb information in the orb he began by choosing subjects that interested him. That’s how he got tangled up in the Izarian Historical Accounts. He inquired about periods that he thought he knew something about and when he found out what a crock of excrement he’d been fed, he dove into his drama of helplessness. After Mr. Brown made some adjustments and managed to get Al back in the saddle, Al began to make some historical inquires that went beyond pre-history. He began to search for some seed, some clue as to where the human race went astray. He was methodical. He began 6ooo years before Christ. He went further, past the lost continent of Atlantis, beyond the Civilization of Mu. It all had the same tone, the same unrealistic goals and selfish despots. It no longer depressed him any longer. He had become more objective as the result of the chemical that had been introduced into him. He began to take the information in without being affected by it, as if he were the alien making observations without the personal involvement.
As he went deeper into the past the societies became more primitive, some in a violent way and others in a more celebratory way. There were images that his mind were stimulated by seeing, names that he could relate faces to. He began to spend more time in the orb again, manipulating the intelligence to seek and display his every whim. That’s when he came across this story. What caught his eye was the word Almera. It upset him and took him by surprise. He played the story over and over again, committing it to memory. He wrote it down and its been preserved to this day. It went like this:

THE ALMERA

Ancient ancestors rode these waves, when the world lent humans a lap to lay their time upon, to feel what the sea feels, rub souls with the fishes. They were born to the sea or were drawn to it. They danced on the land, they danced on the sea, and they dance in our dreams. They are the stuff dreams are made of!

I am going to tell you a story about the people that lived a long time ago. The story has been told many times by our ancestors and has been carefully preserved to stand the test of time.

There was once a wave that broke where this land is standing. The land looked very different then for it has a life of it’s own as does the sea! Life for our ancestors was quite different then as well. It was a tropical place with two seasons; not the four that we’ve become accustomed to. The people lived a life of idleness and frolic because the land and the sea provided all that they needed to live. There were giant fruits to be eaten and the ocean provided them with food of every description. There was giant Cuttlefish who’s skeletons, drying on the beach, provided them with vehicles to ride the waves of the sea. The ocean was their playground, they spent the better part of their lives there, swimming, fishing and riding the waves that were abundant as well. The world around them was alien because of the mountains that, at the time were near impassably sharp and surrounded this entire area. Since our ancestors were in need of nothing they did not venture far. Life was too joyous and simple to consider leaving. They were not filled with the inquisitive nature that we have with one exception; The Almera Circle! They were simple people and the world that they lived in was soft and innocent. The outside world did not appeal to their minds and what they knew about it was enough to put them off wanting to know any more of it. This they learned from “bardos.”

There were a few wanderers that ventured here and usually never left, having found a paradise that the world had overlooked. Soon after their arrival they would take on the look and demeanor of a native born. This transformation became known as Bardo and many of the immigrants took this name as their own. It was a nickname that stuck, like the Hawaiian name, haoli or the Mexican name, gringo, all of which translate as stranger.

Your ancestors lived very long lives here. There was no stress or suffering. There were no diseases. Jealousy and envy were not yet in existence and they were able to live in harmony with each other, all as great friends celebrating life.

The one great challenge in this idyllic existence was the Almera Circle! It was a great wave that broke in a circle, round and round, seemingly without end. This wave broke on itself off the shore but could be seen clearly from anywhere in the village. It had been there as long as could be remembered. They were born with it and died with it. It was the subject of much speculation because those who ventured there, never returned! After a long life along those shores some of these seafaring people felt the desire to challenge the one wave that none of them had ever returned to tell about. It was a challenge that was not for everyone and there was a great reverence to be observed in the undertaking. For these people who spent their lives riding waves, this was the ultimate challenge. It was speculated on and theorized about. It was the unknown. The Circle was deified by our ancestors, after all, they had spent the majority of their lives riding waves and this wave represented the pinnacle of that pursuit. They would meditate on it, argue about it and develop theorems regarding its origin and significance. Those who were considered shaman of the sea would, at the close of their lives, and with great ceremony, enter the Circle, never to be seen again. It was considered destiny after a full and peaceful life to be swallowed up by the sea, buried there where the sea could wrap them up in her warm and all enveloping liquid arms. This time was approached with great reverence. The date was chosen by a council of elders for the challenger. His motives had to be correct in order to maintain and preserve the solemnity of the event. There would be a period of reclusion during which the challenger would engage himself in riding the waves at night at the Diamond Reef. This was hallowed ground and only the challenger was to ride there and only at night. The sea bottom was made of pointed Crystal formations. During the day or on a clear full moon night the reef gave off a blinding rainbow of light, which, if looked at would destroy sight! This wave was constantly perfect to a point where the challenger need only be thoroughly centered in their confidence and they would be able to ride without sight.

Many months of travel to the East, in a place where no notion of the sea existed, a boy was born. It was clear as this boy grew that he was out of sorts with his surroundings. The customs and traditions that his parents observed were awkward and clumsy to him. There was something alien to him. He’d been born out of place and everyone knew when he reached manhood he would leave.

Diphues, (Pronounced Dep-oos’) reached manhood and said good-bye to the family that raised him, orphaned by birth. He became a wanderer, following his feet to find a home. He walked out of the valley where he was born and into the mountains. He lived among the people of the mountain caves. Their diet of red meat and fowl caused him chronic maladies of every description. Soon the winter snows came and Diphues set off for warmer climes. He lived with the people of the great sand desert, he lived in marshes and he lived on the flat land with the farmers. Everywhere he went he found the same alienation and awkwardness. The furniture that these lands were made of, spurred him on. His desperation grew and his pace quickened with that desperation. As yet, he’d been wandering aimlessly, following his nose and the weather. As a result of this desperation, Diphues decided to travel towards where the sun set. He did not like cold climes and thought that where the sun lived, perhaps there he could find a home. With this questionable logic, Diphues set out towards this vague destination with a new zeal! He hoped that just over that hill or in the next valley he would find a place he could call home. West! He knew he would not re-trace his steps again with his new compass. As the weeks became months Diphues developed an urgency, a certain anticipation. It drove him to walk that extra hour, as well to rise before the sun.

Dreams, strange dreams began to enter Diphues’s sleep. A great body of water, the like he’d never seen. There was no land, only water as far as the eye could see! He saw himself floating on this water or diving beneath its waves as if it were his home. He was not afraid but felt content there. The dream occurred, again and again, and during one re-occurrence, when he had the foresight to taste the water, it was of salt! This revelation was disturbing to him. He wondered if there was such a place and the seeds of doubt were germinated. He worried that his decision to travel toward the sunset might have been the wrong one. He wondered how he could find something that he wasn’t even sure existed? Still resolute in his decision, he journeyed onward.

Slowly the landscape became more tropical and the weather, warmer and warmer. It rained each afternoon violently and then as suddenly, it would stop! He happened upon a great mountain range, thick with a bottomless jungle. Still the sun set on the other side of those mountains so he was compelled to continue. For days, then weeks he fought his way through the bush and bramble, thorn and vine. It seemed the jungle was as endless as the mountains became still steeper. In places he would reach an impassable cliff, detour it, keeping the sun as his compass. He would sleep for a few hours and wake, only wanting to reach the top. He would travel on till exhaustion had the better of him and he would have to rest again. Finally he saw what he thought was the top and he was filled with a new energy. He walked all night. There was a tropical downpour that night and he felt that he’d gotten lost. Exhausted, he collapsed into a deep sleep. He was a few miles from what he would come to call home.

About the same time as Diphues began his travels, a man named Nez was reaching his time of challenge near the Circle. He had become a wave master in the little village. One who was revered and held in great esteem. Quiet and reclusive for many years, his only activity was riding waves. He had become very old but still had a light in his eye that let everyone know there was something special to the man.

Nez began his reclusive period of seven years at the same time as Diphues began his journey. He spent all his time riding the night waves at the Diamond Reef. Only three moons into his reclusive period, while he was out at the reef on a very dark night, Nez fell asleep in his calm and lost track of time. The sun came over the mountain like a bolt of lighting. When the light hit the crystals of the reef, the light refracted there blinded Nez. He made his way to the shore and his hut where he fell into a deep sleep that lasted the best of seven years. He would wake in a half dream state, perhaps eat a bit, then fall back into sleep. He was taken care of by the villagers but he spoke to no-one.

As those seven years drifted by, the waves of the sea kept the rhythm and the old man dreamt the line of the waves into a circle, over and over, round and round. Perfect blissful symmetry without chaos. Sleeping as if he’d, by sleeping, had been awakened from the clouded perceptions his old reality was rant with. He was not ill or disabled, he was sleeping and by doing so, living a life of perfection, clear and unencumbered by question. The line between awake and asleep became dimmer and dimmer so he did not know in which state of consciousness he was in. He was of this world only about one fiftieth of a sun in a quarter moon, or an hour a week. The rest of the time he was asleep. He was not disturbed or cajoled to respond, only cared for and left alone. The villagers would visit his beach hut and leave fresh food for him each day and it was usually left undisturbed. Once an old friend of his stayed with him for one moon and observed his habits. There were no words spoken and although Nez acknowledged that his friend was there, it was only as a simple gesture, nothing more. His friend left after that month disturbed by something he could not understand but convinced that there was something growing there.

The sea sounded a constant thunder on the reefs of this place, like a fortress built to protect the innocents! Beyond, Diphues was stirring, above the beach, within the confines of a rising forest, folding into a valley, then rising again to the heights of the clouds. Diphues woke up to the faint roar. It was in the distance. The sun had yet to rise and after the windless rain of the night before had ceased, the morning was very quiet. He was awakened by the incessant roar of the sea. Suddenly the fact that he was close to the top of this mountain jolted him to his senses and his heart leapt into his throat! He was overwhelmed with the feeling that he was close to the end of his journey! He jumped to his feet and clamored to the mountain top. He saw the sea for the first time and understood what his dream was showing him. There it stretched out before him, like the great creator had wiped the land away and put in its place water. As if the works of the land were too jumbled and confused, too conflicting for humans to deal with. Here, the sea brought all to order with one common element, water! His eyes turned towards the roar and that’s when he saw the Almera Circle! He saw the beaches and the lagoon with some people wandering through the shallows. The sun had come over the ridge of the mountain and as colored light shone from one part of the sea, just at lands end. It was the Diamond Reef.

Diphues began to run down the mountain, fell down, got up, walked a bit, then began to trot, then he was sprinting again till he fell down again where he would start the whole process over again. It took him an hour to get to where the mountain leveled off and he took the gentle grade at a dead sprint. His heart was racing his body with excitement when he finally made it to the beach and the sea!

Diphues, the Bardo, stripping his clothes as he ran, tripping over them in his anxiousness as he plunged himself into the sea for the first time. As our traveler was emersing himself in the deep, baptizing himself in the world as he knew it should be, Nez was eating a banana, fully aware of the Bardo’s presence. At first Diphuess hoots and hollers were curious and strange to the blindman and he thought they were nothing more than a humorous dream. Listening with detached amusement and staring into his void of darkness, Nez began to feel the urge to ride waves. In all the time of sleeping he’d only flowed with the dreams and never decided to take some direction. He wasn’t sure if he were asleep or not but always felt he had the ability to do it. He was weak and a bit foggy. He knew where he was at, the Diamond Reef. He suddenly realized that, because he was blind, he could ride the waves here whenever he pleased. The fact that he couldn’t see a thing did not bother him in the least. He had been listening to the waves break on this reef for seven years. He knew its rhythm; he could see it in his mind. He knew where all the “furniture” was and how to move through it! He could sense every rock, every divot in the sand. He could feel the waves in his bones. Tell where the steeper sections were and where the next wave was going to break, how fast it was going to break and where it would collapse. From the space in the sound he could sense how big the next wave was and how far he should go till he started his turn back to the top. As he walked over to his cuttlefish bone he could feel the bardo watching him. No-one else! Nez walked to the water and stepped in. The temperature of the water was different than that of the air and it startled him a bit and his senses were further sharpened by the touch. The bardo sat watching in rapt anticipation. Nez was the first person he’d seen in this place, as well, unlike any person he’d ever seen!

It seemed like slow motion and very well could have been, after all, Nez had been round the sun 87 times and he’d been sleeping for seven of those, plus, as has been painfully pointed out, he was as blind as a bat! Diphues saw, transfixed, the water man step into the water and look out towards the sea, as if startled. He laid his bone on the water and lay on it and began to stroke with his arms, propelling him through the water and out to where the waves were breaking. Diphues was sitting in the shallows, absentmindedly sifting the sand through his fingers and seeing for the first time something he would be doing very soon. Slack jawed and barely breathing Diphues watched the story unfold.

Nez stroked out a bit and felt the water in his hands, on his body, on his face. He could feel the warmth of the sea change as he approached the reef. He could feel the light invading his long sleeping darkness. The sound of the waves were getting louder and he paused to listen more carefully; the sequence and timing, the pause of silence preceding the crash of the wave on to the reef. He could smell the fish and feel they were nearby. The channel began to draw him in and he let it. By the sound he could tell that the waves on the left side of him were breaking more smoothly; less erratic! The channel carried him past the impact zone and he turned to the left to where he knew the center of the break would begin. He counted, six waves to a set, eight waves to a lull, then six more waves, the last of which would be a little larger and break a little further out and more to the left. It was there Nez was waiting and it was there he fell asleep. (Perhaps our friend Nez has a sleeping disorder)

Diphues was watching intently and he was strangely familiar with the movement of the sea. He recognized the channel and the rip-tide that was moving near the reef. He watched the sea bubble and boil where the waves were breaking. He was watching Nez. Nez was sitting on his bone, then he laid down. Nez didn’t move for a long time and seemed to be asleep, just drifting. Diphues didn’t think a thing of it and remained the anxious observer.

As Nez was sleeping he drifted slowly towards the beach and where the waves were breaking. He was suddenly startled awake by the sudden lifting he felt when the last of six waves went by him. He smiled knowingly, realizing that this was not a dream. He stroked outside a bit to adjust for the next set of six and sat up again, waiting.

Diphues’s attention was perked by the water mans movement. He’d glance away for a moment, his vision drawn back now and again by the intuitive knowledge that something would happen soon. Diphues was wet and covered with sand. There were sea slugs trailing on his submerged legs and there were small Cray fish scuttling all round him. He counted six waves and eight. On the last wave in the series it happened!

Nez finally realized that he was in what we call the real world, the organic existence, it's a material world! He knew what he was there for, why he’d put his blind ass in this position. He summoned his concentration and bared down. He knew the line of the wave and the many variations of that line. With focus, he knew he could do it! He counted six and listened, feeling for the sound of the pause and then the breaking, the reef flushed but not defeated by the collapsing wave upon it. Nez counted eight and with that he set his mind on the last of the next six. The waves rolled by; 2, 3, 4, 5. Nez began to stroke in the direction of the sixth wave as it lifted behind him. The wave stood up on the reef as Nez picked up speed. Just as the wave was upright, Nez stood up and began sliding down the waves clear unbroken surface! He could feel the difference between the water rushing up the face of the wave under his bone and the bone moving over the surface of the wave. The race was an old one, something Nez had been doing all his life. He knew where to turn, which line to strike for the smoothest transition. Again he counted; one, two, three, four, lean, steer, pause, trim erect, stretch up, Easy! He lay down on his bone and paddled back out to the reef. Diphues needed a jaw sling and a rinse, (he had sand in his mouth by now)! His mind went off somewhere to change itself! His eyes hadn’t blinked! He’d stopped breathing!

Nez was wide awake by now and was well into another go! The dreams he’d had over the past seven years or so had revealed the lines he had to know. He could see them in his mind, feel them, sense them. He knew there were no boundaries for him now,(and he had plenty of sleep)! His hand in the water, propelling his bone through the sea was saturated with propose, destination, piercingly focused!

Diphues sat in the sea and watched, listened. Nez flashed re-plays of dreams, projecting them on the surface of the sea. Lines recalled, then drawn by the blind man, dancing hysterically calm on the dried spine of ancient giant cuttlefish skeleton. As the sun lay into the sea, the absence of light slowly cooled the water and the waves became more satin, as though the water were covered with a mist of oil. As the darkness melted itself on the sea, the breaking water took on a phosphorescent glow. With every stroke of his arm, Nez left a trail through the water; fluorescent trails of stained fluidity!

Diphues was still on the beach, transfixed. His mind was doing what omniscient’s do; Vulcan tennis! He’d long ago let go of the things that he felt were true and was desperately trying to grab on to this new idea. It wasn’t that Diphues was grasping for straws, he was trying to come to grips with what this stranger was doing in the sea. It wasn’t so much the physical aspect of it because Diphues felt that it was his for the doing. It was that Diphues got the impression that this man was doing this dance from memory! As if the man could be thinking of weeding his garden while at the same time he was sliding down this cliff of water as casually as he waits to fall asleep! Something was there in that nonchalance. Some nuance he’d not witnessed before in any other human being, but it seemed more than that; Nez was turning into the essence of water! Folding himself into the waves, one with the fishes and the seaweed! Diphues felt himself drawn deeper into the sea. He’d long been naked and he swam like it he was born to swimming! The sea was dark since it was the middle of the night and so when Diphues got head level with the sea he lost track of Nez. The current seemed soft and gentle to Diphues and it carried him out through the zone to where Nez was counting.

Diphues was swimming in the direction of where he saw Nez last. He was drifting to the left. He was pensive when his feet left the bottom and he had to support himself. It gave him a feeling of embarking on another journey and was very excited by the knowledge the he was on the path of what was sure to be new discoveries. He was swimming for the first time in the sea and it was different than swimming in rivers or lakes. The water seemed to pulsate with the energy of the waves. It was the first time in his life that he was completely enraptured in what he was doing.

He swam strong with the current and found he swam more fluidly under the sea and so he practiced holding his breath as long as he possibly could. Soon he was near where the waves break and he thought he might swim under them. The first time he was a bit tense because he didn’t know if it was possible. The wave was just beginning to break and would be over him so he dove deep, feeling for the bottom and as he went under it. It collapsed on top of him. He swam easily through the turbulence and could just make out the silhouette of Nez.

Nez could feel the bardo swimming near him and it was just a bit strange for him at first. Then he began to notice that the bardo was staying under the water more than he was on the surface. It seemed odd to Nez but it wasn’t important so he brushed the thought away. Diphues was diving to the bottom and then looking up, staying down as long as his lungs would hold and then surfacing as quietly and calmly as he possibly could.

The two strangers went through the night like that, Nez catching his waves and the bardo playing fish in the sea. Nez rode the waves all night and then suddenly he felt a danger, not to himself but someone else. It was a vague feeling at first and he attempted to brush it off but it became stronger and ultimately consumed his attention. Suddenly he realized that it was the bardo and he would surely loose his sight with the sunrise. Nez tried to talk but the words would not come. He felt the pangs of panic and struggled with his mind to shout out but it was useless. Suddenly Diphues quietly rose from beneath the sea right next to Nez and Nez attempted to attract his attention by splashing the sea next. Then Nez waved for the bardo to follow him and he began to stroke toward the beach. Diphues was curious what the man had to show him now and it seemed that he was urgent to have him follow. Diphues came up next to him every now and again to let the man know he was following him as requested. They made the beach just moments before the sunrise and then Diphues realized what the urgency was. He got his first good look at Nez and saw that he was blind and then he felt the new born glow of the sea where the sun seemed to explode off the Diamond Reef. All at once he realized that the man had just saved his sight.

Nez walked to his hut with the bardo in tow. He offered him fruit and some dried fish. Diphues ate with gusto as the old man nibbled slowly. After a time Nez went over and picked up his bone and went back to the seas edge. He waved the following bardo off and Diphues understood. Blocking his eyes from the blinding glare, he watched Nez paddle away towards the reef.

Nez was to ride the waves of the Diamond Reef for three days and four nights. He’d been to his hut for the last time. Diphues would watch from the beach during the day time and swim out during the night, practicing what he had come to love, staying under the water. Diphues would swim under the waves and watch Nez’s bone slice through the water just over his head. He would swim to the bottom and hold on to the reef, just laying there in calm repose, holding his breath and trying to ignore his body’s calls for air. By the fourth night he needed to surface only a few times.

The Almera was thundering just round the point and Diphues could hear the occulating wave seem to get closer and then dim into the distance. Nez too listened with rapt attention. His time was coming soon. He was curious about what this bardo was doing in the sea. He’d never known of another bardo, or native for that matter that could stay under the sea for such long periods of time. It was just a bit distracting. As the nights went by and Diphues spent less time on the surface, Nez thought of it less and less till he managed to put it out of his mind altogether. By the fourth night Nez was ready for his challenge.

The villagers were watching this all go on from the shadows of ancient palms. They were mostly silent, as if they were watching a phenomenon occur. On the last night, just an hour before the sun was to rise, Nez stroked his cuttlefish bone towards the point and the Circle beyond. Diphues followed him from under the surface. The sound of this wave, breaking in a huge circle was a awesome sound. It would get stronger and stronger, as if it were an approaching stampede of horses and then, in the same amount of time it would seem to fade into the distance. Nez had put the bardo out of his mind and stroked toward what he’d been preparing for all of his life. Many times had Nez come to this spot to watch the awesome spectacle. Now, that he could no longer see, he was counting on his mind to pull him through. He was on the quest of a lifetime, this lifetime. He would rise to the occasion, he’d made the connection between now or never! (Perhaps he’s crossed the line).

Diphues came up just out side of the Circles current. He could tell that the Circle was drawing water from the sea around it to feed it’s need for energy, as if it were making something that absorbed everything around it. He saw Nez stroking in the direction that the Circle was collapsing. The sun was coming up and the sea revealed it’s beauty in the color blue. Diphues was swimming just beneath Nez and with the light of the new day, could see everything clearly. The wave began to pull Diphues to the surface and so he dove deeper and lost track of where Nez headed. The current of the wave became stronger and stronger and Diphues dove deeper, and as he did it got darker.

As Nez knew well, the wave was an occulating maelstrom with many variations of wave. As the Hawaiians have many names for types of waves, so did the people of this time and place. It was something that all of the people that lived there learned as a matter of course. As the wave broke in it’s circle it, sections would be very steep, almost bottomless, then just round the corner the bottom would rise up and render the wave flater and less critical as if it were reforming. By the sound of the wave breaking Nez could tell where the steeper sections were collapsing and where the more gentle slopes of this ever changing wave were. These space were never in the same place but there was a rhythm and with a bit of patients and concentration the rhythm could be picked out. Nez used all the things he’d learned all those years in the sea and the sequence of his dreamings to put the pieces of this rhythm together. He began to stroke in the direction of the waves breaking; at first well away from the outer occultation and, as he came more in tune with it’s rhythm, closer and closer. He paddled round the circle near three times, listening and measuring the sounds of the different kinds of waves that were breaking there. He knew where and when he would enter this, his last wave, the wave of a lifetime!

He stroked his bone up on the back of the circle and it flattened there, as if it were opening the door for him. The waves roar came up from behind him and he stroked away from it and down onto the wall of water. As he picked up speed, the wave stood up behind him and the bottom fell away. Nez stood up and turned up into the standing water as it pitched out over him. He had entered the circle and was dancing there. The rhythm of the circle played it’s tune and Nez danced along. The wave buckled and collapsed, it flattened again only to become bottomless, again and again the wave changed character and dimension. Nez stood on the sea and adjusted to the mood of the wave and it’s many faces, round and round.

As Dipues was swimming along the bottom, the sea seemed to relax, as if the wave had moved on. Diphues decided to surface and see where he’d come to. As he rose in the sea, with his eyes opened, he could see that he was inside the Circle! It was an immense valley of water, zippering round and round.

Diphues watched for a long time, sensing the significance of this blindmans dance upon the sea, feeling the joy of the dance flow through the man and into him. Diphues sank back down into the sea and swam beneath the wave to see. With Diphues beneath the surface, Nez went sliding by and then Diphues would swim to deeper water until the breaking wave began to reform and then he would swim closer to the surface and watch Nez glide by again.

The day went by and Nez began to tire. He could steer his bone over the top of the wave and go back to his hut if he chose too. Then he could feel that the bardo had been swimming in the vortex of this circle somehow. He wanted to go there too, so he did. He turned his bone down the face of the wave and raced the falling wall of water, just missing being tossed into the maelstrom.

Diphues was beneath the sea, making discoveries of his own. While swimming there he saw many new things; the giant creatures seemed to wander aimlessly in the placid depths, taking no notice of the bardo or some, curiously having another look, without the least anxiety. There were sea dwellers of every description and they all seemed to have the same demeanor; casual cautiousness. He came upon a bubble. It’s shape was delineated from its surroundings by it’s color. It was darker blue. Inside there seemed to be a shape, like a body. Diphues swam to this darker spot to have a better look. He was in very deep water and the light was not the best but he could make out, just barely, that there was some sort of shape there. He swam round the egg shaped bubble, looking harder and harder, trying to see what was inside. Finally he reached out to touch the object and as his hand touched it’s surface he was drawn inside. It happened quickly but not violently and so he was not overcome with anxiety but went with it.

The bubble was made of water and the creature inside was a woman, or appeared to be. She did not speak to Diphues but merely looked on him in welcome. Since Diphues had spent most of his life with strangers and he had no knowledge of what was ordinary and what was out of the ordinary, so this event didn’t seem outside the reality of the area and he took for granted that this creature was a member of the other strange sights that he’d just recently come in contact with. It was not the case.

The woman seemed to speak to him, although he did not see her lips move. She reached out to give him something and he accepted it without looking at what it was. She wanted Diphues to go and get Nez because she wanted to take him somewhere. It seemed to Diphues that he’d been under water for a much longer time than usual but he was not getting tired and he was not concentrating very hard on holding his breath. The creature waved him off to do his errand and he left.

When Diphues reached the surface, there he found Nez. He seemed to be waiting for something or looking at something. The Circle roared on and Nez just lie there, taking it all in. These two never had spoken a word to each other and never would. Diphues pressed the coin into Nez’s hand. He’d noticed that the bardo had surfaced nearby. Nez took the coin and felt it in his hand. He seemed to understand that the bardo wanted him to follow him beneath the sea. Nez slipped off his board, holding the hand of this bardo and followed him into the deep. The creature in the bubble was nearby. Diphues led Nez to the bubble and led him to reach and touch it. Nez slid inside and Diphues stayed outside with the coin in his hand. The bubble slowly began to move in the direction of the circle until Diphues could no longer keep up with it’s speed. Soon it was out of his sight. He thought he swim against the current and see when it would return but it did not. Diphues swam to the center of the Circle and scanned the horizon. He was never to see Nez again.

Diphues waited for a long time in the Circle, in hopes that the old man would return and then finally he swam back to the beach and the hut. The villagers were waiting there. Many had followed on their own bones to watch what would happen when they saw that Nez was headed for the Circle. The natives did not speak the languages that Diphues knew and Diphues did not speak their language either. He showed them the coin and tried to explain what he’d seen. As time went by, they all learned the story. Diphues lived out his life there in relative quiet with the exception of one occurrence that took place that very same night.

Diphues and the villagers gathered together that night to see if they could better understand what his story was. They had hoards of food and the night was clear and dark. The stars filled the heavens and all was peaceful. Then suddenly there was a bright light that seemed to come from the direction of the Circle and the light rose in the sky very rapidly and as it did, it got smaller and smaller till the little crowd could no longer see it. After that night no-one talked about entering the Almera Circle again.

OBSERVES THE CHASM

Al Fwada found himself on the boat alone. He knew that Mr. Brown would not be back this time. The orb was gone although the boat still seemed to be sailing itself. The storm had passed as slowly as it began and it was days before he knew Mr. B “flew the coup.”

He remembered finding himself tied to the mast, the boat, half sub-merged in the torrent. Mr. Brown had lashed himself to the tiller and was laughing hysterically and flailing his body about like some drunken rave dancer. Al remembered being frightened. He recalled a dream. His mind was playing metaphysical ping pong. He lost consciousness or thought he had. A long time seemed to pass. He was very tired. The storm seemed to rage on and on with little respite. He fell into his fear of dying, enjoined it, embraced it. There was a struggle, yet he felt removed from it as though he were caught in the grip of an irresistible force which there is no escape. He saw himself swept to sea. He closed his eyes and although he was dreaming, there was darkness.

When Al woke up the sun was breaking through the big fluffy tropical clouds. The wind had all but stopped and the painted door was flung wide! That’s when he realized the orb was gone. He was a bit groggy from uncounted days of uncertainty. Rummaging through the debris, he found something to eat and sat down to take stock of his situation. His mind drifted back to the events that led them into the storm.

The tempest began just south off Rapanui. The sun was warm and the breeze was calm when the last of the land sunk into the horizon. That was the last of the good weather as well. The storm began in the evening, the sun turning gray before the sunset with high heavy clouds. Their puffiness was gone and they’d amassed themselves into an oppressive blanket. The wind got very still and seemed to die altogether as if the coming of the darkness smothered it. The sea seemed confused; waves coming from all directions, their energy coming from everywhere. The boat lost it’s rolling motion and was tossed and turned, sometimes half submerged, other times riding high with it’s rudder, bare. Mr. Brown spent the night in the orb and Al slept in the aft deck locker with the nets. The morning brought a brisk wind out of the north east. It was a hot wind and when it slowly began, the rain brought no reprieve. First the rain came like the offspray of a mighty waterfall, a mist, then a drizzle and by mid-day it was coming sideways, horizontal. Mr. B had come out of the orb below decks sometime during the night and was looking through the hold for something or other when Al woke up. His sleep was short but deep. He was ready to get back to the orb. The storm was raging and the boat was listing badly. For the first time they were confined to the lower decks. The orb seemed to be the only place that would offer any calm in the vortex of this storm. Mr. Brown stopped him, explaining that Al would have to wait till he was gone. Today was a good day for space travel!

This was a time when dreams and the physical world touch hands, where myth and reality play catch and the boundaries of the game go out of focus. This was the sweaty cold world of change that Al Fwada found himself in. As if he were enclosed in a capsule where sight of the horizon is gone and with it, loss of all bearing. If it weren’t for the fact that everything in the below decks had been properly stowed, it would have been like being in a giant wooden blender. Al crawled about or just held on to ropes and beams to keep from being tossed or slammed about. Mr. Brown seemed strangely calm and remained near the orb shaft that went all the way through to the bottom of the boat. This madness was to go on for days and the time passed in silence. Al spent a great deal of time staring. In the past few months with Mr. B so many things had been clarified for him and yet there was still one question that puzzled him. Why, of all the people in the world had Mr. B chosen him? What was it about himself that was the deciding factor in his decision. It was a question that was not likely to be answered and there was even a bigger likelihood that the answer would not be understood. Al had come to know that the intellect of Mr. Brown was far in excess of any mind he’d come in contact with in his life, even the orb was subservient and its workings, he was just beginning to comprehend.

After several hours of wrestling the sea, Al was showing signs of exhaustion so Mr. B showed him how to lash himself to the bulkhead and sleep. The second part of which was much more difficult. The night and the day had little to distinguish them and being violently awakened served to provide another aspect in the overall ambience. There were other factors. The Izarian designed hull didn’t leak a drop! This was an errie fact! The boat was dry under deck, the element of the storm/torment deprived to the senses. As more time went by the lack of sleep came to be custom. There was dried fruit and fish jerky with water rations. Using the stern of the boat for a bathroom had become impossible.

There was endless torment and the raging of the sea and then one morning there was a calm. It wasn’t to last long. It was just a pause; a window in the storm. They were in the eye and wouldn’t be able to stay there for long. Mr. Brown opened the aft deck hatch and went up on deck. The sea was still a maelstrom and just off the horizon all round the storm could be seen. The boat and its crew were floating in the water in what looked like a giant spotlight and all round it was black and ominous. It was difficult to focus when the hatch first opened. The air was still enough for the smoke of a fire to rise straight into the sky and, although the sea was still in the flux of the storm, its surface was smooth, like a lacquered oil painting. Mr. Brown walked to the rail of the boat and looked out to the storm on the horizon. Al was standing behind him wondering what might be going through his mind. Mr. B’s posture was that of reminiscence, of reflection. It was one of detached longing, as if he’d already left and knew there would be no-one to share these reminiscences with. Memories like the ones old beasts must entertain when all their peers are dead and all the memories had been made. Earth would be like that for Mr. Brown and the birth of that feeling was occurring today on the deck of this tiny boat in the eye of the storm It was a short episode but intense and Al, for the first time felt a bit sad for this lone traveler.

Mr. Brown turned around and faced Al. He looked hard for a moment, as if to say, “I want your undivided attention now!” Al studied the lines around the old man’s eyes and the bottomless depths of their green color was captivating. There he saw so many things, so many secrets unfolded there. Al was rushed by a feeling of deep sadness. This would be their last good-bye and they both knew it in their own way. It’s effects were similar just long enough for Al to realize that there was something more to akin to them both beyond the journey they’d shared. Something more intrinsic and deep rooted. It was to change his whole life. More than all the journeys and adventures combined, he had discovered something about himself that adjusted his perceptions . Mr. Brown said, ”Remember, your life is not a ladder, its a circle, ”and he pointed out at the chaos. The storm was moving west to east in the south and back again, round and round just on the horizon, “The question is Al, are you going to continue to return to the place that you started?” Al, for his part, was far too caught up in the expression on the face of the man to be struck by the cryptic message. It would visit him. They were the last words Al heard him utter.

Two hours later they were back below decks and well within the storms vortex. Like a cork in a boiling cauldron, the boat rocked and swayed while being swept at the will of the maelstrom. Al was beginning to feel a bit cramped stuck below decks and out of sight of all the action. He decided he would go topside and experience this first hand. He went to the aft hatch and crawled outside. He made it over to the mast and lashed himself to it as best he could. The rain was blinding and coming from all directions at the same time. It was warm, as was the wind and although was drenched to the bone from the first minute that he came on deck, he felt more at ease here since his senses were not deprived. Here he would witness this tropical storm first hand and it was certainly something to behold. Tied to the mast, he felt a bit like Ulysses might have felt when he wanted to hear the song of the Sirens. Al thought that those Sirens could certainly have been Izarian and wondered if the legend was accurate. Pondering such trivia in the face of such awesome power seemed perfectly natural to Al and when he looked at what it was he was doing, he had to laugh at himself. He looked up and there was Mr. Brown, standing at the helm, one arm lashed to the wheel and the other flailing in the wind. He was laughing like an old witch or a child on their first ever ride in an amusement park. This went on for hours that seemed to stretch on and on. At some point Al lost consciousness.

After spending a few months with the likes of Mr. Brown, collecting thoughts can be like visiting your cousin for the summer and getting to keep all the toys; when you finally get home with them your imagination runs wild with you. You feel different somehow. All your old toys are somehow belittled the second you realize that these new toys are yours to keep. Sure, there might be one special toy that you already had that retains its magic but, by and large, your imagination has been captured. The old will begin to seem silly and childish. Eventually you will make attempts to disassociate yourself with those fantasies, proclaiming the current interests are truly your fantasy. You dream of visiting each of your cousins and that each will similarly open their toy boxes to you. You invent cousins that live in the opulent captivity of moneyed indulgence; (for too often, love is replaced with substitutes) and you are given your quarter. Your imagination slowly becomes subject to the trials of reality and your toy box is moved into the attic.

Mr. Brown’s toy box? Al had this “cousins” toy box opened to him and it turned out to be beyond his wildest imagination. All the “old furniture” in his life seemed awkward now. Nothing would ever be the same again! Al sat on the deck of his boat and pondered where he would go from here. What was the purpose of him knowing all these strange and wonderful things? He couldn’t tell anyone about his adventure. He was sure he couldn’t even explain what had happened to him since he was still struggling with the pieces himself. The fact of the matter was that without the orb, the only proof he had that Mr. B even existed was this boat and its eclectic collection of artifacts. And why would Al want to have the world in on his secret? What possible good could come from that? As had been painfully pointed out to him the world was not prepared to accept the idea of a vast departure from the norm. This recent episode in Al’s life could certainly be categorized as such. Like so many other unexplained occurrences that the world had seen, this too would be dissected, scrutinized and then filed away, only to be considered as an interesting aside. Alternative approaches to the world have always encountered suspicion and only after a deforming struggle, manage to make themselves felt in some mutated form; a compromised bastardized version of the original idea. Pity change was still such a terrifying prospect.

Al started with putting his house in order. There was all matter of debris aboard; seaweed was everywhere, small fish, uncounted plastic bottles, old shoes and beer cans, nets and drift wood, slime of various descriptions, bits of plastic that defy speculation of their original form, a dolls head, coconuts, tree branches, bottles, thongs of every size and color,(22 lefts and 7 rights), Which, by the way, are the same numbers that the Egyptians used as their fraction equivalent for pie or 3.14. Al managed to make 5 mis-matched pair, as he said, “already worn in.” The sun was being friendly and the boat continued to sail itself with the exception of raising the sails. That, as Al had learned, was all for show because the sails hadn’t been up since they left Tumaco. Al set up the barbecue and caught a fish. He had a few beers and watched the sunset. He was content although a bit lonely. He reminisced about Mr. B and felt heavy chested. He wrote a bit of poetry while pacing the decks in the company of the moon. He found his hammock and was quickly taken prisoner there. The world had taken on a hypnotic hum and Al melted dreamlessly into the woodwork.

Below the tiny boat the orb flowed gently in the warm sea. It was the first solo expedition for this novice. She too had the blood of two planetary genes in her and she knew how to do some interesting things with sarongs. This was an adventure she had long hoped for. After she found that it was indeed her that was going to Earth she made special inquiries regarding the planet. She did studies and comparisons, she looked at the evolutionary impact that the experiment had caused on this planet. She reviewed the history and its psychological impetus. She was very enthusiastic and I should think her parents were quite happy for the respite.

Vatea named herself. She was reviewing some Polynesian archives and found old records of a woman who had visited this planet in the past. Her namesake appeared to the islanders as half porpoise, half women. For some reason this creature had not been seen there since well before the Europeans arrived. Choosing a travel name was traditional on Izaria and the opportunity was relished.

Floating in the orb in the warm waters of the Pacific was lovely and provided Vatea with a calm time to acclimate. She spent this time reviewing the orb for all types of information. First she reviewed the log left by Mr. Brown and found it very interesting considering that none of it was in the current documents that were now available in Izaria. She was quite shocked to find how slowly this race was progressing. Reading about a place and traveling there is generally two different experiences altogether. This difference would become more and more apparent as time went by but the trend was revealed in the information left by Mr. Brown. She drifted along. She went for a bit of a swim and spied the boat from a distance. It looked funny even though she’d seen pictures of it many times before. She too was thrilled at the life in the sea. It was a dream come true to be here and she was drinking it all in.

A few days went by. Al had charted the course that the ship was going. It was clear to him that the orb was still in control of the vessel. It was set for a course of 32 degrees north east, straight for the Marquesas Islands. Al remembered reading about them in a book he’d found laying round the boat. It was just before the storm. There would be waves there. He was happy about that although he was a bit concerned about the fact that the boat didn’t seem to respond to any maneuvers that he made. The way things were going, Al figured he’d run right into the first land mass that appeared in front of the boat. The tiller was still as un-responsive as it was when the orb was on board. He set about looking for all the information he could find regarding the islands in which direction he was headed. It was beginning to get a bit lonely on the boat alone and he began to have dreams that seemed to reflect that feeling. He wondered why Mr. Brown told him that the orb was going to remain when it clearly had not. He was feeling very much alone and began to feel sorry for himself. He drank too much beer one night and fell into a drunken slumber that he didn’t wake from till the middle of the next day. That’s when he met Vatea.

It had been a full week since she and Mr. B had changed places. She spent the majority of that time in the orb absorbing all the information she could. The rest of the time she spent in the sea. By the fourth day she knew all about Al and his life, his fears and his hopes and dreams. One night while Al was asleep she climbed over the side and took a look at this human being. It was the first live human she’d ever seen and she was a bit anxious. She had seen films of these creatures and studied their habits extensively but she had never seen a live one in their own habitat. The tension of the moment was heightened by the fact that she had snuck on board the boat. He was laying in his hammock asleep. He seemed so peaceful and harmless, it was hard to imagine this creature doing any of the awful things that she had learned that humans were capable of. She stood there for a few minutes just staring. He moved a bit and said something she couldn’t understand. She was frightened that he might wake and discover her there staring. She slipped back off the boat and into the water. She felt like she had taken something that wasn’t hers and it made her a bit uncomfortable. She shook off the feeling and returned to the orb to look deeper into the enigma of the human race.

When Al woke up from his drink induced sleep the painted door was closed. He was a bit foggy from the effects of the alcohol but the fact that the door was closed jarred him awake. He was sure that he’d propped it open with a wedge. He got out of his hammock and began to walk across the deck when he found wet footprints and his heart leapt out of his chest; was Mr. B back!? He looked around and there she was, standing at the helm like Mr. Brown used to do, looking like she was concentrating on the sailing of the boat. She possessed the beauty of a Botticelli women, not stunning, but emitting a air of ethereal aloofness that was irresistible, (and, as been said before, she knew how to knot a sarong!) Al was rendered speechless and the silence reverberated between them for several minutes. They just stood there staring at each other, staring without even knowing it. It was a suspended moment and it seemed to linger in the air like the smell of fish lingers even after that presence’s had been cleaned up after. It was a pause that neither could break with a spoken word. Al’s mind stood still and silent. Nothing entered his mind, no question, no images of what might come to pass.

She said, “You can call me Vatea. I’m Mr. Brown,s replacement. You must be Al, is that right?” Al just nodded. He was dumbstruck. Things were moving so slowly when he went to bed last night and now they had resumed their characteristic pace. He couldn’t find his tongue. All the changes that he had been going through about his feelings and the way they were formed seemed to illud him now. He was feeling vulnerable and pensive at the same time. He was awkward and gangly. He walked over to the little stair and up to the painted door. The orb had become a friend and now it would serve as a refuge. Vatea watched him with passing interest still Al felt self-conscious. He opened the door and the orb hummed at him, buzzed to him, churned with brain power. He looked over at Vatea and said her name very slowly pronouncing each letter into the next like a song. She smiled at his dreamy state of mind. He slid into the orb and didn’t return for three days. By the time he does return they’ll be a week away from Starbuck Island on the Kiribati Ridge.

The Kiribati Ridge is also known as the Christmas Ridge and runs north to south across the equator. For some reason the Polynesians thought that the ridge in the north should be called the Kiritmati and the south portion of the same ridge in the south would be called Kiribati, so the name changes at the equator. This small chain of islands are in the northern part of French Polynesia which was most likely just called Polynesia at some time in the past.

Starbuck Island is a remote isle. It’s warm there. There are reefs with fluorescent fish and other organisms that are undiscovered by humankind. There’s palm groves, old and abandoned. There are very few people who live on this island and they do not own televisions or fax machines. They are quiet and superstitious. They live with nature not next to it. Their island didn’t meet the feasibility requirements for the large agricultural business venture that was interested in the island. They grew coconuts but there was poor anchorage so the venture could not expand, as well, the remoteness of the island made things that much worse; economically speaking. They didn’t know “that language” very well and they weren’t interested in the game anyway so it didn’t matter much. Vatea wasn’t going there because of any special advances that those inhabitants had made; either economically or spiritually. She was simply visiting the home of her namesake.

In the meantime she set about arranging her new home. She gathered all the books and sorted them, she inventoried the gear in the hold where she found Mr. Browns collection of flags. She too would use them for sarongs and other practical uses. She cleaned where Al had not and she re-painted “the door,” as all of her predecessors had. She put up the mainsail to keep up appearances. Soon they would be in more traveled areas and the sight of a sail boat making way under no obvious means might seem a bit suspicious, to even the greenest of mariners.

When she finished, she had a look at Mr. Browns collection of charts; the ones he’d collected and the ones that he’d made himself. She made use of her log book and entered her activities of the first week there. Between jobs she would hurl herself over the side and have a bit of a swim. While under the sea she found the orb with Al inside and wondered if the orb was accomplishing it’s task. What that task was, we can only guess. It might be safe to say that Vatea had little idea until she got to the planet that humankind was so emotionally handicapped. She realized that unless Al could vault still another hurdle regarding his emotional development, there would be no further advancement of his mind. Although the technology of the period had advanced to a respectable level in relationship with the evolutionary development of the species, their emotional development had sorely lagged behind. The orb had revealed to Vatea just how deeply rooted and remedial this development was. She realized that Al was struggling to accept the changes that had been proposed to him by Mr. Brown but she also knew that the biggest changes were yet to come.

She’d made certain adjustments to the orb’s make-up that would gently adjust Al’s perceptions and, as a result, slowly remove ingrained fears and learned limitations. It would be a slow process and there was the subtle danger that Al would regress into what Francis Bacon called “the mad degree of love;” a vaguely defined and illusive condition that was considered the pinnacle of human emotional endeavor. It was a fine line that Vatea would have to tread in order to give Al the ability to take control of his emotions, and with that new ability, truly love, starting with himself! Only time would tell and Al didn’t have much of that left. She knew he had things he still had to do, and yet she knew he still had to learn these things on his own!

When Al finally came back to the boat he found it completely transformed. It was no longer the eclectic catch basin that Mr. Brown choose to live in. The boat had been put to order and the state of it revealed the nature of the woman. He felt like he was on a different boat altogether. It was refreshing and just a bit intimidating. He wondered what kind of woman was it that “moved in” so demonstratively. He was looking the place over when he heard the high pitched wail of Vatea and he looked up just as she launched herself off the top of the mast, laughing all the way into the sea. It was a lovely light moment and immediately took the edge away. Al rushed to the rail of the boat and watched her swim back. She had the look of a tom boy, giggling and splashing about in the sea. She was not the serious character that Al had feared. She had a similar temperament to Mr. Brown and, as I said before, she could do some very interesting things with sarongs!

The next three or four days were filled with deck games and mad diving stunts off various bits of the boat which they both made a game of. They sighted a tiny atoll, a reef, just barely submerged and Vatea and Al anchored there. They spent their time swimming in the shallows together playing made up games, chasing fish and each other. They began to soar.

He’d never swam with Mr. Brown. When he thought back, he wondered why he hadn’t. Seemed like he should have but it never happened. Watching Vatea swim was a sight to behold, so graceful and aquiline, she could swim circles round Al and was always poking him and holding him down. She had the same ability that Mr. Brown had in that she could stay underwater for very long periods of time without surfacing.

As the days went by, Al’s confidence was growing. He began to sleep less; waking in the middle of the night from his hammock and slipping into the orb. He was experiencing less of the highs and lows that his life had been plagued with and more the consistence of contentment. He had slowed down his mind and many of the reoccurring anxieties of his past had simply melted away. He was at peace in the sunny tropical world he was visiting. Part of his true potential was slowly revealing itself to him and the gradual change showed itself in the relaxing lines in his face and the furrow in his brow that was no longer there. His relationship with Vatea became one of great friends, she taking pains to relate to Al on a level he could understand and not reveal the full depth of her intelligence and understanding. She was glad that he was spending so much of his time in the orb and the atoll was a lovely spot to stop and reflect.

Vatea had been making subtle adjustments in the oxygen level of the orb ever since she and Al met in order that he would cut his dependency on it. He wasn’t aware of the changes but they were indelible. It was one of the things that Mr. Brown had started to work on in Al’s mind that Vatea was continuing on a physiological level. It was the one thing that would prove, on a physical level that Al was indeed part, if not equally of both worlds. They went swimming for long periods of time each day and Al found he was able to remain under water longer and longer. He didn’t notice the change at first, and when he did acknowledge that there was a change, he thought it was an occurrence that had come through practice.

During the first week on the atoll Al took out the surfboard that he’d stowed in the hold with the fishing nets. He went for a bit of a paddle around the reef. On the far side of the lagoon was a rock shelf where the bottom fell away. Perhaps the top of some new land mass. They’d arrived during low tide and the rocks were exposed but when the tide came in there were perfect waves there. Vatea had never seen this done, surfing, and Al went each evening to the little rock shelf and surfed till sunset. One evening Vatea swam out to the shelf with Al and watched from the water. She swooned privately while Al was out of sight. In all his primitiveness, Al Fwada had a certain elegance, a understated deliberateness that came shining through his motions and in the sea he glowed with it. She could see it in the way he rode his board in the waves, the way he fit in to the sea and the motion of it. She swam beneath the waves and watched his board go sliding by. She could see the clear water turn white with turbulence where the fin cut through the water. She discovered that if she swam fast enough in the direction that the wave was breaking she would be pulled along by the force of it. This was something totally new to her and although she knew of surfing and it’s methods, she’d never really taken any interest there because on her planet there was no possibility of such an activity. She began to look forward to these sessions with Al and began to ask him questions more often than he did of her.

She was developing unseemly attachments to this primitive and began to have feelings of self-doubt as to her capability for this project. The Izarians knew about Al and were concerned that this type of thing would happen but in the reverse. It never occurred to the directors of the project that their candidate would be swept away before a wave of emotion. Well it hadn’t gotten that bad but it was certainly headed in that direction and Vatea knew it. She examined her feelings and they repudiated what she knew to be fact. This human gene link in her was beginning to rear it’s contradictory head and the fact was making her a bit nervous. There were too many things left for her to teach Al without confusing the situation with something as course, as unlikely, as intimacy. This was the dilemma that faced Vatea while playing with Al and other fishes in the sea off Starbuck Island.

Al on the other hand, Al was beginning to bloom. Had he known how vulnerable Vatea was becoming, this might not have occurred. He saw in her eyes, in her actions a new kind of confidence. Hers was a challenging approach to the world as it had been re-defined to him. He saw that change was most certainly the only remedy for the state of the world and he felt excited about it. After a week he began to write, long into the night, gathering his thoughts in the sea surfing at twilight and then in the orb after dinner. Then he would make the night of putting them down on record. He found that he no longer got tired as easily as he used to. He was inspired and clear. The fact that he could go into the water at all hours of the day and night made the stay here that much better. He found he spent no time any longer being bored and restless. Now his mind was moving along in a very straight line with a very specific destination and, although it was not yet in view, the light at the end of the tunnel was still clearly visible from where Al was standing. He was stepping into a new area of perspective each day and was anxious to see what would happen next! He didn’t have to wait very long!

There was something that kept creeping into his mind. He had managed to brush the thought aside till one night it hit him. He had accessed the workings of Mr. Brown’s mind in the orb and it may as well been Chinese. He tried several times. It was always the same, accessibly inaccessible. He found that he could access Vatea in the same way and the information, although open to him, was impossible to decipher. That was when she first showed up and he hadn’t bothered since. Then that niggling suspicion came upon him a few times and he put it aside thinking, ‘how human!’ Then the feeling came to him several times in the course of a week and so one night he went into the orb and had a look. Al had come to trust the information that he received in the orb and what he learned there was as daunting! He had been feeling powerful in himself with the help of these women, as if he were walking behind her and now it seemed she wanted to walk beside him; for him to be an equal and step up to the challenge. It was information that was there for him and no-one else. He was used to being alone and the thought of being a part of two as one was something he had only experienced failure in. He was unsettled and falling fast!

He came out of the orb and dove straight into the sea. He swam to an exposed bit of the reef and landed there. He felt alone and fear was welling up in him. For the first time since this journey began he was truly afraid. He thought these aliens were above this sort of thing. He began to back up on the things he learned recently, discounting them, each in their turn. He looked into the sky and saw the shooting stars. He went for another swim. He could hear the waves lapping their way over the reefs and through the coral. He heard the waves slosh their way across the table rock. He wondered why he felt such chaos in the face of something he had come to feel was a uniquely human weakness. He felt this chaos was insurmountable, a debilitating flaw that he could not overcome regardless of how he tried. He felt like throwing himself away. With his feeling of uselessness he found himself standing on a reef sobbing. He cried it out to the stars, he screamed his frustration, he whimpered his defeat. He clutched the weeds to him like a lover, wrapped them round his neck and face as if to obscure him from the world, between his legs to hide his limitations. He felt ugly and foolish. He was in a panic and, as he was tired, the reason was becoming more and more vague.

Al fell asleep on the reef, wrapped in seaweed. His dreams came to him like a calliope, first one, then another, still another, round and round. First the strange Mexican City that had signs everywhere saying Puerto Escondido National, then there was Mr. Brown and Conrado in Conrado’s boat. They were talking to Vatea who was in the water and holding on to the side of the boat. The next image was that of all his neighbors in the village; Brisas Zigatela having a big party and celebrating but all the buildings were new and the children were now young adults. Next he saw a strange old man and a young boy. They were in the sea looking toward each other but they did not speak. Still another passing dream sequence in this calliope was an itinerant Mexican Taxi driver and his family who seemed to be living in that strange city, Puerto Escondido National. Al felt he was somehow a part of this scenario but was unsure of his role. The merry-go-round moved on and just as it was about to begin again the tide began to come in and lifted him from the his seaweed bed and into still another reality.

He untangled himself from the kelp and swam to deeper water. He reviewed the dreams and revelations of the previous evening and they refreshed him on his quest for change. It was renewed as well. He brushed aside last nights doubt and it’s subsequent nightmare. He was drawn to the dreams and their significance. He had shed his fear. He realized that all change was fearsome in the eyes of his species and he was determined to see the other side. He decided to launch himself into it. He swam through the reefs like a resident, as if he belonged there and he began to relax. He breezed over the emotional trauma that he’d experienced the night before and was embarrassed by it. He laughed at himself underwater. Then smiled at the fact as he surfaced. He floated on the surface for a bit and pondered the fact that, even though Vatea was also part human, she could stay beneath the sea as long as any fish. He saw Vatea, the animal complete with all the contradictions that he was struggling with. He recognized that she had learned to effectively deal with the chaos of emotion and still have emotions as something she could indulge and not fall into as if it were a trap. He wasn’t afraid anymore. He realized it wouldn’t get easier. He smiled. He was convinced that the emotional aspect of his existence could be brought under control. He decided to follow Vatea’s lead and to stay out of the orb till he felt he could control this shortcoming with his intellect. That wasn’t how it would work out but at least he had a plan to go forward and not back.

When Al made his way back to the boat, Vatea was gone which was not unusual. Al was a bit concerned about their next meeting. He wondered if she sensed the reason for his abrupt departure of the night before and soon as the question entered his mind he knew the answer. Of course she sensed it! She was, after all, quite the antennae and very little got by her, least of all anything as dramatic as human emotion. At least Al did not make a big scene. He just left and that said it all. He was gone the night and that was another statement in itself. He felt a bit foolish again. He was embarrassed by his reaction but knew he couldn’t go back on it.
After Al “jumped ship,” Vatea went into the orb and witnessed the upset that Al had experienced at the knowledge that Vatea was capable of human emotion. She had to laugh at the childish way he reacted to this revelation. Still it was important for him to know that she was capable of the same maladies that he was and at the same time, he had to be made aware that he was also capable of overcoming them if he could let go of the anchor, so to speak.

More difficult obstacles were on the horizon. Other things were taking place on the planet. The French were planning to test their version of the Big Bang Theory under an atoll that was in the general area that Al and Vatea were in. The whole world was whining about the tests and since the tests were to take place thousands and thousands of miles from France, it wasn’t any wonder. Their argument was that they were only doing what every other country in the world had already done years before but the tide had turned against this sort of practice. It had become what was called “Politically Incorrect!” The French were being confronted in every arena. There were boycotts and demonstrations against them, there were activist’s sailing themselves into the area in an attempt to keep them from detonating the devices, politicians were making statements condemning the tests. Tourists cancelled their plans to visit France, futilely hoping that the economic squeeze would bring them to their senses. Most of the desenters were from countries that had similar testing programs in the past.

At the same time the Chinese were setting up a test of their own. There was a deafening silence where that issue was concerned. At the time, 1996; the Chinese accounted for over 60% of the human population of the planet and no-one knew what they would do if they were aggravated so the news of their tests didn’t manage to make “The Seven O’clock News” until the test was completed. It was a typical story of “little dog pissing, big problem, big dog pissing, no problem.” China was certainly the biggest dog on the block and most did their best to avoid its shadow. These tests had been going on for less than 50 years and the impact on the planet was only guessed at. The impact on human existence could have been devastating had the devices ever been put to use.

To Vatea this behavior was a farcical kind of slapstick where the Keystone cops actually do kill each other. After all the heinous crimes and suffering that mankind had suffered at their own hands they continued to insist that the person living on the other side of the fence was still their enemy, be they brother or sister, and they felt threatened by them and compelled to build bigger and more powerful weapons to insure their safety. It had become a sad situation and still no-one had managed to see though the fence and realize that they were all the same and in the same boat. She wondered how long this farce could continue. It had grown to proportions that were beyond any humans understanding or control. It was comical in the most tragic sense of the word. When she thought of Al, she felt a tinge of sadness for him. He was certainly fighting an uphill battle and he had precious little hope to stem the tide. It was frightening and she was glad she was not a native Earthling. It seemed to her that life on Earth had become an exercise in denial; where new lifestyles created new problems and rationalized the existence of these problems in the name of progress. Squalor and opulence lived side by side, as if in two different worlds. Bums, starving for sustenance, both nutritional and emotional/spiritual squandered their lives in the search of the same. The opulent, starving for contentment and realization, ate well and enjoyed the best the world could offer yet they suffered the same destitution of the impoverished; their rationalization only serving to make the lie that much more guilt ridden and in this they sunk deeper and deeper into the muck of it. The difference was that the opulent had the vehicle to make the change. They had time! The poor spent all of their time scrounging for bare essentials. They had neither the wherewithal or the time to look for a way to stem the tide that seemed sure to overwhelm them all! It was surely a sorry state of affairs and it had been for a very long time.

Al, for his part, was in a group that used their relative affluence for a ploy of avoidance. He was part of a very lucky group of individuals who, after reviewing what quality of life was available to them against what would be sacrificed as a result, decided to dive into the world of denial with both feet. Theirs was the epitome of hopelessness; dragged down with the knowledge that the first world was in the strangle hold of greed and insecurity (anal retention) and the majority of the rest of the world was searching for tonight’s dinner. They chose to buy dinner for their impoverished neighbors now and then and live amongst them. The hopelessness was so deep rooted by now that some could hardly deal with their plight in the carefree context of the tropics. Here, only last night, when Al was faced with the uncertainty of his own feelings, he was plunged into abject hopelessness. Vatea had to ask herself if this was something that he could overcome. Ultimately the question was, could these gifted and dexterous beings take the reins of their existence and turn their world around? It was a question that had been on the agenda of the Izarians for many centuries and it’s answer was not to come soon by any standards.

There was another question that the Izarians thought worthy of addressing; that was the condition of the rest of the beasts on the planet. Humankind had adopted the idea that they were somehow superior to the rest of the planet; both beast and the earth itself. It’s as if some deity had given humankind a hunting license and it was open season on the lot. The decimation of whole species of animals has been the result! The planet itself was under attack; take for instance the demonstrative act, detonating explosives in the bowels of the planet itself, but it went deeper than that; human beings actually thought that they were innately elevated above the rest of the planet. “We have a soul,” was the premise of their illogical conclusion. This was the premise they used to decimate a good majority of the beasts that inhabited the planet, especially the ones that cause humans problems! Funny thing was that the biggest “China Syndrome” was the planet itself. Mountains are made of rocks and human beings considered them to be inanimate, not living and otherwise out of the game. It was a problem! The Izarians had been observing this planet for a very long time and the planet Earth had gone through many changes through the millenniums. It was not a static piece of drift wood humans imagined it was, no. It was still a forming organism but human beings, with their ability for denial had created rationalizations that enabled them to brush that fact aside. That denial was the essence of their problem and Vatea was starting with just one, Al Fwada. Change was an illegal alien on this planet and it was having a tough time getting a visa.

It was the case that there were large groups of humans the world over that were looking to change things with the planet in mind. Unfortunately they were well entrenched in the same muck that they were trying to clean up. Their position was further weakened by the fact that they were forced to subscribe to the same modes and methods of change that those in power had set in place. It was called “working within the system” and it was a system that was not set up to change, just grow endlessly. This meant that they had to stop the direction of change and point this momentum in a new direction.
The affluent were not interested in creating changes. In fact it ensconced these would be “architects of a new world,” into a group called Eco-Activist. They were considered a pesky lot that unfortunately the media had brought to the forefront of the news and as a result, had to be dealt with. Their effect was one of mild irritation, not unlike a fruit fly in a mango orchid or an Ecuadorian fruit stand. The corporate world had devised ways to deal with “their” nuisance. The methods were different, depending where in the world one might be, but the outcome was the same and the irritation was rendered negligible. It was like that dirty little lie that is so plainly seen and then denied, “The Emperors New Clothes,” or the brother of a purse snatcher, “I don’t know which way he went ossifer?” Something had certainly gone awry and it was becoming more and more malignant. Things were not improving, they were being smoothed over, dressed up and made to look good on the surface. It was an escalating situation. The voices that were carrying the message were being quelled, rendered surreptitious.

Throughout history there have been seers and prophets. There are religions and philosophies, both born of each other. There are followers and “junk dealer holy men.” With these the “hook” is the same; the offer of self-fulfillment. Throughout history there has been good or what is perceived as such, and there has been bad, evil, (generally in the particular), thus the child of egoism was borne! Good or bad, this child has possession on it’s mind and it’s motivation is sex! The motivation of sex is so powerful and contradictory that it brings the majority of humankind to it’s knees. Either murderer or nurturer; it’s a seed that can propagate the deepest of love or the most hideous of all human emotions, jealousy! Good and evil are borne of this, the strongest of human contradictory inclinations and it has been at the root of a large majority of human endeavor, indeed, the primary deity of the western world commanded, “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth,” so mankind and womankind did just that. This same deity saw that humans were becoming more passionate about sex than they were about the spirit world from which they came, all in the name of multiplication so to speak. Although the indulgence in sex is an easy pastime to fall into and a powerful one to contend with in the first place, the fear or repulsiveness of it became just as powerful and so there were born two groups; one with and one without. The group with sex expounded on the tenderness and joy of it, (clearly the group with the strongest hedonistic tendencies). The group without admonished that it was a weakness born of the flesh and would only serve to cloud the clarity of vision necessary to understand what their deities purpose was and that sex, for the sake of sex and mutual gratification was a sin/bad. There were wars between these two groups. Their champions entered the arena with, each, their own self-righteousness, both evoking that their deity was the “one and only true god!” The image of good and evil took form in the face of the enemy and champions mirror. Each individual had a picture of righteousness in their minds and the enemy became the devil or his tool. It was considered just that these champions should go out and press their righteousness on the infidel. (It’s an interesting aside that the word “in-fidel” should be used in this context.)

First there were two groups, soon there were many and the fighting escalated as did the pre-occupation with sex. As time went by, the teaching of the deities were re-fashioned “to suit” and there was born religion without faith, learned and regurgitated doctrine not taken to heart but rendered as an irrevocable premise providing no flexibility. Rigidity! God became big business and, like the Eco-activist, was neutralized. Sex on the other hand became more and more indulged in. Humankind over the centuries had re-defined everything from god to the planet itself but sex and its practice had remained unchanged. It was still “that dirty little lie” and people were either shy of it or wallowing there. There was no new definition for sex and, as a result love had become a possession more than a shared joy.

Al Fwada was an outsider in this, skirting the suburbs of promiscuity but never setting up house there. Long before he’d met Mr. Brown and now Vatea, he knew that love was in need of a complete overhaul but he, like many of his contemporaries, he didn’t know where to start. By 1996, in a world exploding with new innovations; space travel, international communication nuclear science, micro-biology; sex and love were still defined the same way as it had been for the past three millenniums. It was a little explored domain who’s boundaries and depths had yet to be fathomed. Exploring the continent of love without hatred was as fearful as the seas had been in the distant past; an unknown, with powers beyond manipulation or understanding. So what is it that sex provided? Security? If security is a product of sex then ownership is the procurement of security. Human emotion is far trickier than that and changes without notice or apparent reason. That unpredictability combined with the modulation of self-doubt and its antecedent, over-confidence has provided human emotion with all the highs and lows of a poorly built and less than secure rollercoaster that has been declared condemned; a sort of soup sandwich all its own! To congeal its uncertainty without undermining spontaneity or creating fear was, till now, an unrealistic goal. It was an envelope that many were straining to break. Al Fwada was one of them. Love was looking to find itself in the arms, if not in the bed of freedom; an exciting and possibly steamy place that could only exist in the reference of now!

Vatea found Al that evening, surfing the tide. It was a typically tropical night with the sun setting and the clouds obscuring the light. She retrieved his board when he lost it. She lay on top of it and paddled toward him, mimicking his stature. Al was swimming towards her and noticed her paddling attempt. She was concentrating and her upper lip was pursed in the effort. He had to laugh at her impersonation of him on a surfboard. As she paddled closer he yelled, “why don’t you give it a try.” Vatea let out a laugh and exclaimed, “I thought I might!”

They spent the next three years playing in the sea; finding atolls and bits of reef that the earth was considering making into an island. They visited Starbuck Island and were received with all the warmth that one would expect from a tropical island. They lived there for near a year, visiting the boat now and again just to make sure it wasn’t something they’d made up. They did not fall into love but visited there; all the time knowing that someday there would be a good-bye. At the end of three years they headed north and east, toward the continent of America. It was not a mutually chosen direction, they’d just happened to end up going that way as a result of their habit of following the winter season that is so lovely in the tropics. They were still a year away from that great land mass and there were many adventures for them in between. The learning process was still going on but it took on a gentler edge, without the shocking revelation that Al’s Izarian experience started out with. Vatea, for her part was learning a great deal as well. She was still living up to her obligation to the project as so many of her predecessors had done but she was beginning to see a side to humanity that she was able to find no record of. She thought the reason might have been how close she had become to Al and the fact that she’d yet to visit anyplace but what humans called paradise. As things would turn out, the world will have changed by the time she leaves the planet but we won’t have time to address her whole story here.

MEANWHILE

Puerto Escondido National! Welcome my friend to the opulent world of financial wealth, where the earth and the sea have been brought to their knees by the awesome power of mans intellect. The sea, where once lived a silently roaring power had been extinguished by the advances of mankind. There were no waves now, just a harbor, an enormous tribute to humankind’s need to find new ways to control nature and overtly press their will on everything around them!

The waves, once so insurmountable, so awe inspiring, had been literally undermined. The Corp of Engineers simply took away the bottom till the waves were rendered tidal. When they had made the bottom so deep that no wave could break there they built a great sea wall that went a mile out to sea and turned north and returned to the cliff in of town. They built a road on it and some seaside shops and cantinas. There were jet skis and sail boats, the beach was lined with high rise hotels, shaded tennis courts, acres of swimming pools and miles of bar tops. There were white faces and “English Spoken Here” signs. Gone were the burros, the tacos, gone were the bontanna’s and cock fights. The sea had been tamed and the culture re-fashioned to be acceptably polite.

The trip from the airport to the beach was different now too. Large corporate buildings now stood where only two years earlier there were places like Casa De Tornillo (House of Screws) and Palapria De Lopez (Paper of Lopez). There were no 2 peso beers and there weren’t any surfers! White suits and BMWs, mobile phones and lap top computers; those were the garb of the hour in Puerto Escondido National.

There were very few Indians working here although there were a few. The city was run by the central government and most of the people that worked here were hired directly by the government. Everyone who worked there was screened by that institution and chosen for their lack of personal enterprise. It was a big happy family and everyone was taught to regurgitate the word, yes!

The city became an international sensation overnight. There was a scheduled SST flight that landed in Puerto weekly from Rio De Janerio. The jet set from the south of France made their presence known. The United States President owned a villa down by the point. The Ex-Presidente of Mexico, “scoundrel turned good guy,” moved back into the good graces of the Mexican middle class by being a primary investor in this gold mine of a tourist attraction, Puerto Escondido National and had moved to the city too! There were big deals going on everywhere and Puerto had become “the place to go.” There was big money floating around everywhere and the fate of economies was being planned, the fate of nations. There were NO FLIES! Land that was only five years ago planted in cacautues (peanuts) and roamed by horses was now part of the high pressure world of land speculation on the global market where European speculators tendered their bids in secret and never saw the property till the builders had finished with it. Rivers that were once used for washing everything from clothes to sheep had been landscaped and modeled. A Japanese Corporation bought an entire mile of the Colotepec River and transformed it to look like the famous river, Tone Gawa did in Japan in the sixteenth century. Lots were bought and sold at an alarming rate. There were no longer small lots that could be bought for a song, they were huge lots that took equally huge amounts of money to purchase. The Mexican government had hatched the goose that laid the golden eggs and they were having the biggest omelet the world had ever seen. It was lovely. It was habit forming. It was the “City of Dreams” and the world came to be part of it.

Guillermo made his way through the quagmire of screening and evaluation and managed to land a job driving taxis in the new city. His wife, Illiana, found placement with one of the many five star hotels as a maid. Their sons, who both went to the University of Curenavaca, were going to transfer to The Mexican Marine Institute at Mazunte for their graduate work, just 40 kilometers east. It was a dream come true. The whole family was going to be together for the first time and have a bit of money. Things went along very well for a few years, that is until the whole family got caught up in the tales of Al Fwada and his prophecy.

Guillermo and his family had their VW packed to the gills for their trip to the “City of Dreams”. He and his wife spent the better part of a year going through the red tape required to even begin looking for a job in that city. There were applicants from all over the country and they were being screened thoroughly to insure that no individual types with hidden agendas made it through. The family was to begin their trip the following morning and all their relatives came to wish them well at the fiesta that was being thrown for them the day before. There was drinking and eating and many children under foot. There were tears and hugs and the exchanging of gifts. There was sadness and joy both because it would be a very long time before this family would be able to visit their relatives in Mexico City and many of them knew each other for the whole of their lives. Guillermo was torn by the tears of his mother, he wondered would he see her again, and his father was silently mourning his sons departure because he’d been such a good son.

Guillermo had told his mother and father that he’d planned to find a job in the new city where he could make more money than he’d ever dreamt of. His wife too was applying for “suitability” with the government for job placement in the restricted city. They took his news in stride because the rumors of rejected applicants for positions in the new city were becoming a daily item. It had never occurred to Madre y Padre (Mother and Father) that anything would become of Guillermo and Illiana’s attempt. They assumed that he would be rejected like most of the rest. It didn’t turn out that way and now was the day of reckoning.

The Mexicans have very strong family ties and tend to stay together for all of their lives. Guillermo’s father did not like the way the world was changing and was thankful that he didn’t have many years to witness the transformation. It was a sad day for him and, as the next few years went by, there would be more.

As the night wore on, lips were loosened; largely by the effects of Tequila and other innocuous lubricants. The party evolved into one big hugging fest, a sort of a family love in. They began to laugh, a few belly laughs here and there. The mood began to swing from amorousity to comedy. The mood was quickened by the volume and frequency of someone’s unique and comical laugh; distinctive and unforgettable. Then a group would laugh and everyone would turn to see what was the “funny.’ Soon the whole family was laughing and hugging and drinking. It didn’t matter what was said, it was funny. Just a look, and the whole family who wasn’t already laughing would start up again. There was no reason to it, it was lovely. One of those parties where everyone manages to “leave their cares at the door,” when laughter no longer needs a fall guy. No-one has to be the pawn because no-one is laughing at a joke. They’re laughing with each other, one of humankind’s highest social achievements.

The children, by now were long asleep in their hammocks and the adults were swept away by a wave of giddiness. A few hours later, exhausted and quite drunk but still hysterical, the rising sun found this group and they were startled by it’s arrival. It was time to go. Guillermo and his little family waded through the milieu to their little city beaten bug and got in. There were tears of laughter all round and they drove away. The laughter remained with both groups till they were exhausted; in the car, in the early morning haze of Mexico City, the little family reminisced about all the “out of character” things they’d witnessed their relatives engaged in. Illiana fell asleep first and soon the city faded away. “Back home,” the family roared on till the next day when finally the party disbanded. Guillermo and Illiana were just moving into their new home with the little they had managed to bring with them.

Change had forced an un-welcomed choice, filled with chaos and uncertainty but the choice had been made. “Ethereal coincidence,” was just beginning to hone in on these two but they took the first step and what a joyous step that would end up to be when it’s considered what the rest of the journey had in store, but like many sojourns of change, there were many hard times to get through before the light at the end of the tunnel could brown their skin.

The first month was a nightmare. There were so many rules for newly placed “partners;” there was the job, which was 8 hours, six days, there were mandatory seminars for Behavior, Manners, and other taught response themes. Their home was monitored through the phone, a mechanism being activated by any sound over so many decibels. Imposed were strict social boundaries and they were not to be crossed. The servants were not to fraternize with the tourists or the residents of the new city who were all well moneyed. This was not a city of beach combers and fugitives like so many other places in Mexico; it was a modern city and the class structure was enforced from without. The government kept a firm grip on “the partners.” It’s ears were perked, listening for the faintest of grumbles, the slightest murmur of descent, and, as seldom as that occurred, it was met with the same decisive action; disappearance. One evening some drunk “partner” would blurt out his loosened dissatisfaction and the next day he would simply be gone, never to be seen again. No one knew who were the ears for the government but “the secrets” seemed to be everywhere and souls who disappeared were never heard from again! This manicured social system provided the city with an ambiance that even George Orwell might have winced at.

Illiana and Guillermo went about their jobs with unaffected focus. They could see that the city they lived in was sterilized and neatly packaged and they had no desire to do anything other than get along there. The plight of the rest of Mexico or for that matter the rest of the world was none of their affair and they chose to turn a blind eye. Their children were going to have a better lot in life than they and this sacrifice of chosen ignorance was the vehicle that was making it possible. It wasn’t long before they became numb to the system there. They became characterless, without opinion, robotic. They fit into the system perfectly. They became, like all their neighbors, partners in the scheme by their unquestioned compliance.

Guillermo drove his taxi and Illiana cleaned. The boys did their studies and rose above their peers. Puerto Escondido National became the worlds playground where the rich flaunted their affluence in the noses of the rest of the world and where they would meet no digression. They took taxi’s to the city and Guillermo suffered them with the joy of a man who was getting what he wanted regardless of his fares pompous attitude, not to say that the tourist were all the same, but this city was known the world over for its monetary segregation. The “partners” that worked in the city and made it run were regimented to be invisible and they did their job well. It was the premiere vacation destination for the jet set at the end of the millennium.

All the opulence the world could muster found it’s way to this place. Lamborginias and jet powered helicopters, diamonds and emeralds were the ticket. Puerto Escondido National made Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills look like a ghetto for the neuveo rich. There were multi digit priced yachts in the new harbor who’s insides looked more like an upscale five star hotel than the guts of a ocean going vessel. There were bullet proof limos and international body guards with their dark glasses and their slicked back hair, always with their hand inside their coats; looking as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The fact that their were police working in the city was redundant. Most of the visitors or residents that were there had more hired security than most first world city’s. The Mexican Police force in Puerto Escondido National were reduced to giving directions and opening doors. They too had become “partners” and were held accountable. There was no thug crime here. There were no thugs in the sense that thieves can be crass. There were although thieves and this city was their “free zone!” There were international hookers who were flown in and out of the city in private jets. There was money laundering and money market manipulation. The city was becoming an island unto itself and the Central Government was cashing in on the dividends of such a free zone. It was a conspiracy born in the bowels of greed and dressed in the garb of a denied prevarication.

Illiana and Guillermo had been married for the past 21 years. They had two boys which they were very proud of. They loved each other and had developed a mutual respect for each other. Theirs was not a typical relationship. “Machismo” was not the man of the house. They enjoyed sharing and they were best friends meaning that they didn’t keep secrets.

Illiana began to speak in her sleep. It started a sudden and was gibberish initially. Guillermo came home from work late one evening and found her sleeping. He went about the business of winding down from work in front of his new TV. He heard her and thought she was talking to him so he went into the bedroom and found her talking in her sleep. She was saying nothing but it was funny to him and he knew she wouldn’t remember it the next day. At breakfast the occurrence was giggled away. It didn’t happen again for a month or so and it was forgotten. Guillermo was on the night shift for near a year and was coming home to a sleeping Illiana every night. Her night chats began again in that they were happening every night. At first it was a humorous subject to discuss in the morning over coffee but the content of these proclamations were beginning to take shape and assume a theme of their own but, till now, it was unrecognizable. She began to spend more energy trying to remember her dreams and did some reading concerning the subject. She used the library, she sent away for books on the subject of dream interpretation. It was a fascinating subject while the dreams were formless but that was not to last for long.

By and by Illiana began to have a recurring dream. She was standing on a cliff on a clear and very dark night, overlooking the sea. She had in one hand some sort of platter or tablet and the other she held out towards the sea. She was speaking but she could not understand what language it was. The words seemed to her to be some sort of incantation but she couldn’t be sure. She was not the only person that was having unsettling dreams in this new city but how was she to know in a place where ideas were stifled and dangerous. It would be the year 2002 before she would understand what these dreams meant and by then, there reason will have been revealed. Guillermo was concerned about it but there was precious little he could do. He could feel something was happening or about to and he was afraid, a fear he did his best to conceal from the woman he loved. He did his best to play these dreams down but as they occurred and re-occurred and Illiana’s imagination became more and more consumed by them, Guillermo’s attempts to brush them off slowly became transparent.

Conrado was one of the few Indians that managed to remain in the city during it’s transformation. He was hired by the Corp of Engineers to provide fish for the crews that were working there. He too was subjected to the rigorous screening that all the other partners were. He was a smart man and could see that things were going to be very different here. He took his contempt and hid it away and concealed his pride. He had become a great success in the new city. After the breakwater was completed and the Corp of Engineers moved off and the tourist began to arrive he was hired to provide fish for the new restaurants that had been built. He went out fishing five days a week with his partner and began to make more money than he ever thought possible. He bought another boat and then another. After a couple years he owned four boats and had eight people working under him. He loved fishing and was one of the few “partners” that were able to come and go every day as a result of his occupation. He traveled up and down the coast of Oaxaca doing what he’d done all his life, fishing, but it was different now. The place had changed and all the old type people were gone. He’d come to enjoy the crazy gringo surfers that used to come to this place but they were all gone now, replaced by pale characters who’s hands had never seen the hard work of life or enjoyed the adventures of the sea.

Most of his friends had to leave as well and he missed them too. The city was now a sterile bubble. Gone were the fish mongers and their naked children. The catch of the day was landed at a wharf that was built just for that purpose and it was all cleaned in a building, not on the beach. Gone were the corner boys with their hidden bottle of Mescal and their cat calls for the tourist girls. There wasn’t any hanging around the streets just to be apart of what was going on. No more pick-up soccer games, no more Indians. There weren’t anymore all night party’s on the beach, “NO SURFING! Puerto had become an obscenely rich city and all the signs that it was in the deepest south of Mexico were gone.

Conrado went to Roca Blanca now and again, just in the hopes that Mr. Brown and Al might show up. He was at the party when Al made his hasty departure. He hoped that he would see him again and thought Roca Blanca would be the logical anchorage for that duo. After a few years, going to Roca Blanca was more nostalgia that genuine hope but he went there nonetheless. He had been bottom fishing there and caught quite a few large hauchinango now and again but nothing like the monsters Mr. Brown had. He managed to keep the spot secret and liked going there because it reminded him of the way things used to be.

The transformation of Puerto Escondido National brought the world of oppression to the forefront of the news again in the form of a 15 second sound byte on a Spanish speaking network. Meanwhile the news spread like wild fire over the laundry lines in Central America. From mescalitos to lucid practical housewives with twelve children and one in the oven; the peasants of Central America could see that this act was just another in the course of an irresistible object; namely the unquenchable greed of the rich!

There was brash talk, people had rallies and protests against supplying the city, well intentioned university students put their vocal cords on the line in support of the debacle, the pope said an un-disclosed number of hail Mary’s and gave a speech in Spanish, preaching the benevolence of Charity. Those pesky fruit flies could use some bloody charity but perhaps they have charity and what they’re looking for is sharing. Human beings seem to find sharing uncomfortable though. Rocks and May Flies want to have a rally too. “They want theirs!” (Well that’s what they’d say if they said things). They want to talk with guns in their hands and look like Ghangis Khan. The President of The United Sates of America said, “the Mexican government is not currently involved in the practice of the violation of human rights in the new city of Puerto Escondido National.” The United Nations registered a protest and three years later it was vetoed by the GREAT POWERS. (Heeeheheehee)

Well, the shit wasn’t going to hit the fan for a bit yet but their were many who thought it should have made impact long ago. In fact, it was hard to find one who didn’t think that way. Still it was hard to envision the masses uprising. Worldwide, revolution appeared the most unlikely of all possibilities. Action against the money made system and it’s cockamamie reason was as unlikely as the rich taking their bank accounts and distributing the money for the betterment of the people. The poor had become smothered by indifference, succumbing to the fact that something was very wrong and, at the same time, powerless to change it and besides, to what? They needed a hero! The most violated by this system developed for the benefit of the rich would have certainly been Mother Nature but she didn’t have any decisive weapons. (Heeeheheehee)

The Izarians were watching and they were not impressed! Their experiment was beginning to take on all the qualities of a bit of uncooked fish at the back of a broken refrigerator whose door had been closed for a month or so. Meanwhile the natural world was being vandalized with increasing indifference and the human condition had not improved one iota. Objectively speaking, there had been no flash whose point had been reached long ago! The Izarians were on the verge of frustration and had decided on a method. Puerto Escondido National had been chosen as the stage and the only thing left was the method and the sparing of the innocent; the “partners!”

Illiana’s dreams were becoming clearer as the weeks went by and still she could not understand what they meant. They did not terrify her but made her feel there was some reason she was having them nonetheless. She had been working at a hotel as a maid for three years when she met an American family at the hotel where she was working. They were moving into the area and needed a maid at their new home. The woman of the house, Rebecca, liked Illiana and requested that she be re-located at her home as a personal housekeeper. The arrangements were made and after three years and a few months, she had a new position. It was much less rigidly monitored and provided her with a great deal more freedom. She was able to see Guillermo more often and was also given permission to leave the city on trips with the family. They traveled to Hawaii and Cancun, to South America and Europe. Illiana had become close friends with the women of the house and they shared everything, like girlfriends do.

Two years had gone by when Al Fwada moved into the house with the family. Seems he was a friend with the man of the house. Charlie and Al were surfing buddies back in the early seventies and had each gone their own ways. The man of the house had become rich as the owner of a publishing house in San Francisco. Al had become famous as a writer when he just seemed to disappear into thin air five or six years ago. He managed to get back into the town with the help of an old friend and found a home with Illiana’s surrogate family. He lived in the pool house on the other side of the swimming pool and kept pretty much to himself, writing and going on drinking sprees that often ended in arrest. Charlie would go bail him out till the next time. Illiana didn’t know very much about Al and for his part, he didn’t talk much so he didn’t make the opportunities for conversation that available. Reduced to small talk, Illiana went about her business and Al went about his. She thought he was just another rich American eccentric. She didn’t know much about him and what little she knew didn’t interest her anyway. She went about her business and things went along much like before.

One day, while she was cooking a late breakfast for the lady of the house when Al walked in and sat down for some coffee. The lady of the house would have long conversations with Al, usually in the middle of the day. Illiana overheard her telling him about a dream she had been having and seemed animated and troubled about it. Seems the dream involved something about circular wave just off the coast of the city and she said it gave her a feeling of eminent danger, that the whole city was in jeopardy because of it. Al listened to her for twenty minutes. He asked her to write the dream down the next time she had it so the memory of it would be it’s clearest. Illiana wanted to tell them about her dream but she didn’t feel comfortable with Al there. She decided to bide her time and perhaps bring it up with Rebecca later.

TWO YEARS EARLIER

Vatea and Al made the coast of America just at the turn of the millennium. They were just north of the Panama Canal where the water is always warm and the fruit flies were in deep competition with the insect over-population problem that has managed to go relatively unchecked in that part of the world. The Darrein; a place where nature holds a firm grip on the Earth with it’s rare form of natural anarchy. From their boat they could peer into its density and witness its abundance. The hum of the jungle, broken only by the occasional scream of a mammal could be heard over the din of the sea and it’s waves. It was foreboding. It was threatening. It was just there, yet somehow inaccessible. A place only people like Sir Francis Drake or Joseph Conrado would consider entering; one in search of gold, the other in search of reason.

Neither Al nor Vatea had the slightest inclination to enter there even though it was the first great land mass they’d seen in months. It was not for the likes of either of them. The sea was also brimming with life and made for a crowded dip. They weren’t all friendly either. There were sharks and sea snakes in abundance like in no other place on Earth and the sea was swarming with fish. Just looking down into the water it seemed amazing that the fish didn’t run into each other. They sailed north west from Panama, along the coast of Central America. It was middle winter in the Northern hemisphere and the outer current was strong to south.

They sailed along the coast as best they could, trying to avoid the current. Al knew where he was in the world and was hoping to get back to Puerto Escondido and visit. He had been out of touch for the past four or five years and had no idea what the place had become. Needless to say, he was in for a big surprise. Vatea, on the other hand knew all about it. She had an information source unlike any on the planet and adsorbed information there from time to time. She knew all about what was going on in Puerto and she didn’t think it was going to do any good telling Al about it. He’d find out soon enough. Meanwhile they were enjoying the idyllic world of the tropics; Costa Rica, with its pristine beaches, untouched by human manipulation and Nicaragua with more of the same. The few people they came in contact with were every bit as eccentric as they appeared to be. They visited islands and played in the sea. Al had become blissful and dreamy. He was writing more often. Vatea was wondering when it would all end with her and Al. She knew that as soon as he saw Puerto Escondido everything would change. Their dream world was about to be shattered, at least from Al’s point of view. Vatea was hoping that Al had changed enough to provide a little insight for the rest of the people of earth. He was still going to suffer the pangs of his species un-reasonable nature. She knew he had the moxy to make it through and she also knew that she would not be able to help him through it. Soon they would no longer be with each other soon. It was inevitable, especially considering the diversity of their life spans but for other reasons as well. It was going to be tough and deep down he knew as well but he was good at being here now and dealing with tomorrow, tomorrow.

They made their way through the remainder of the ancient home of the Mayan civilization, visiting the Guatemalan chaos. Vatea knew of this place, where the modern cites of the day would pale before the advances of their ancestors. She saw the deterioration that had set in. According to what she had learned, it was the same the world over; the advances of the past had the seed of a flaw and as the result of that shortcoming, the heights that this species was able to reach to was limited. Saddest and most frustrating of all was the fact that they were limited only by themselves. Al was making baby steps and perhaps he’d never run. He was a man, an exceptional one by Izarian standards but it was all relative as any rock in the galaxy could tell you!

Mexico was on the horizon. Al was beginning to get excited. He was anxious to see his old stomping grounds, old friends. The lightning on the horizon at night was the first sign that they were getting closer. They traveled past the harbor of Salina Cruz and witnessed the unrelenting river of sewage and poison that flows from that enterprising city. Salina Cruz; Mexico’s southern most international port has got to be one of the “most something’s” in the entire world, if not the universe. The incessant wind from the Tehuantepec Isthmus brought the first signs. They could smell that they were close to that harbor even before they saw the city.

There was so much happening in Salina Cruz all the time; Hong Kong was busy, Singapore was madness, but Salina Cruz was in a class all it’s own! Abject poverty had permanent residence here in both worlds; physical and spiritual. The world here was nothing more than a dunnie, a crap house. It was made of tar paper, hastily glued together with lost dreams. Transience was a state of mind, reinforced with ever present nutritional hunger. The waste of the cities population stained the sea from El Manguito in the east (about 200 kilometers), to Huatulco in the west. The sea was stained a shade that faded with distance but stayed in the memory. It was a brown stain, obscuring the water in various degrees. In the city things were much the same for whoever lived there, as in the sea; living in the present while ignoring their past, their only hope for the future; eat.

There was a great deal of uncharacteristic traffic in the area and Al could not understand how it could have changed so dramatically in such a short period of time.; large cigarette boats and luxury yachts cruised the sea and private jets streaked the sky. Puerto Angel and Zipolite lit up the night as Vatea and Al sailed by. Al sensed the magnitude of the change and was visibly startled. Vatea could tell that he was troubled. It wasn’t that the change was surprising or that he thought it would still all be the same; he could tell that something just wasn’t right. Zipolite was always a sleepy little hippie town with lots of smoke. It was a town where Europeans went in the winter to layabout naked and get high. The skyline had been transformed from the ramshackle huts and eclectic architecture that eccentrics are prone to, to the skyline of underfunded entrepreneurs with their reinforcement steel sticking up at from the top of their buildings and too much budget tourist activity. It was out of place in reference to what he remembered. He felt a thousand things all at once! He had wanted to show Vatea something of where he came from. He had the feeling it was all gone. It was!

Zipolite is on the coast, about 5o clicks east of Puerto. Vatea and Al sailed through the night and reached Puerto Escondido National with the sunrise. The sun came over the mountain with an audible start! Just around the point lay the city. Al was in the clutches of his memory, excited about what he might see that had not changed and what might be gone that only existed in his memory. As the point came into view Al’s jaw became more and more slung low. The perfect wave that broke there was gone and in it’s place was the breakwater, busy with boating traffic, as if no wave had ever broken there. The sleepy little surfer town was gone and in it’s place was the new city. Al could see the tall buildings over the break water and when he saw the wall, stretching out towards the old fishing harbor and the point beyond he realized that it was all gone. It had been wiped away, destroyed! He was in a mild state of shock and Vatea would see a wave of loneliness overcome him. The intrepid traveler had returned home to find that all his memories had become just that; memories.

Al was planning to anchor in the harbor and visit but this was a strange place to Al and he could see that all that he knew of Puerto was gone, dug up and hauled away. They were under sail as they had been for the last two weeks and Al was at the helm. By the time they’d gone from the point to the other side of the new harbor Al knew there was nothing for him there. He felt like Rumpelstiltskin must have, as if he’d been in some sort of time warp and on his return, all that he knew was not only gone but forgotten! He steered the boat away from the land and back out to sea, further west and up the coast. He had no desire to visit such a place. There was nothing left for him here, or so he thought. It was all gone! Vanished!

They sailed west for the remainder of the day, watching the rich sail along towards what he used to call home. The two were silent. He was overwhelmed by the loneliness that can only come when one realizes that they can’t go home because that place no longer exists. As they sailed along the shoreline returned to more familiar trappings. The multi-storied hotels faded into the horizon and were replaced by bamboo huts and tar paper shacks. Al slowly came to accept the fact that the Puerto he knew and called home was nothing more than a memory now, a place that had been transformed in his absence and no longer existed except in his and others memories. Others that he would surely like to reminisce with but they were most likely gone as well.

It was getting near to sunset and Vatea and Al decided to drop anchor somewhere. Vatea suggested that they go to Roca Blanca, where Al first met Mr. Brown. Here they found the things were pretty much the same as they were the last time Al was here; a quiet little crescent bay with an island at it’s center. He breathed a sigh of relief as they dropped anchor. There were a few Indians in their long boats going about the business of fishing. Soon they were gone and Al and Vatea had the bay to themselves. Vatea went for a swim and Al lay in his hammock and pondered his world.

The day had slowly revealed to him that something was very wrong. He began to feel that there was something that he had to do, some new direction that he must steer his life. He wondered if he had changed as drastically as the place that he’d, only yesterday, had called his home. Vatea knew the answer and that the question was going to be answered soon! He had the answer but hadn’t taken stock of himself for some time now. During that night Al was visited by a dream. In the dream he was on a beach that was vaguely familiar to him. There were many people on that same beach and they seemed to be refugees, just as he was. Something had happened or was about to and there was a general feeling of having escaped some cataclysm. The dwellings were makeshift and there seemed to be more people arriving all the time. Vatea seemed to be somewhere but he didn’t see her. He could see the boat was just off shore at anchor. He woke from this dream at the hail of a familiar voice.

Conrado woke unusually early one morning. He’d been sleeping less and less of late. Seems re-occurring dreams were making themselves known through the partners common language, Spanish. As little as people talk about such things, the interconnectedness of these re-occurring dreams had yet to be revealed. He didn’t spend too much time thinking about the dreams meaning or why he was having them anyway. Whenever he had one of these dreams he always woke with the urge to go fishing at Roca Blanca. His dream involved Mr. Browns boat and a mermaid, or what appeared to be a mermaid. She had long flowing hair and never seemed to get out of the water. In his dream Conrado would be fishing in the little crescent bay and the mermaid would come up on the side of his boat and tell him something that he couldn’t quite seem to make out; something about another fishing spot. He would then move his boat a few hundred meters and begin fishing again. As soon as he dropped his line he would get a hit and begin to pull fish into his boat one by one till he woke up. Every time he had this dream he would go to Roca Blanca that day and have amazing luck. The dream didn’t bother him one way or the other and often he didn’t remember the dream at all but he always had an irresistible urge to go to that same spot. This was one of those mornings.

He came around the point at Roca Blanca as he’d done countless times before, expecting to see an empty bay where he would spend a quiet day fishing. Instead he found Mr. Brown’s boat. He expected to never see that concoction again. He went to full throttle toward the boat. As he got closer he began to get a bit pensive. The boat seemed to have changed quite a bit, as if it had a new owner. It wasn’t likely that there were two of these boats in the world. Conrado eased up to the side of the boat and yelled out a hail. No one answered. The boat seemed to be deserted. He took a turn round the vessel. It was anchored and Conrado thought that everyone on board must be asleep. It was very early, about 5:30 AM. The sun was just letting itself be known. Conrado shouted out again and heard some activity on board. Then the whistle came. It was a familiar whistle, one he and Al had used years before. As Conrado returned the signal, Al appeared on the rail. It was like seeing a ghost or someone you were sure you’d never see again but sorely wanted to. They both were in a mild state of shock at the meeting. Conrado dove off the side of the boat and crawled into Conrado’s fishing boat. They were both speechless for a bit; taking stock of each other. It had been a little more than five years since Conrado watched Al escape incarceration on Zigatela Beach. Much had changed since then for them both. They both started talking at the same time then laughed.

Al started by asking what had happened to Puerto since he’d left and Conrado told him about all the changes that had taken place, the construction of the breakwater and the building of the new city. He told him about how the city had become a safety zone for foreigners and how Mexicans could not travel there unless they were very rich and even with money, they had to go through screening to get a visa even to enter the city. It had become a very exclusive place in the way of the world. Conrado told Al that most of the people he had known there were gone, scattered. He told him how he’d managed to hang on and pass the screening. He told him how rich he’d become and how. Al was dumfounded, not because he was surprised but because, after having seen the city the day before, all his worse fears had been realized by what he was learning. It was all true and still he could hardly believe it!

Conrado began to ask Al where he’d been for the last five years and so Al began to tell his story about Mr. Brown and their voyage, the storm and his new traveling partner, Vatea. They had been sitting in Conrado’s boat for the last hour. The sun had come up and it was beginning to get hot. Conrado, for his part wasn’t surprised by what Al was telling him. He’d met Mr. Brown and seen him in action. The fact that he was an alien seemed to make sense to him. What other explanation could there be for a man like Mr. Brown.

Al was telling Conrado about Vatea and his travels in the south seas when Vatea appeared at the side of the boat. Al introduced the two strangers and Conrado was struck by a strange feeling de je vue, as if this had happened before. He felt like he knew her and then he realized that she was Izarian. He couldn’t help but stare but she didn’t notice or at least let him know he was staring.

They all decided to go aboard the larger boat and have some food. The three of them spent the better part of the day talking about Puerto and their experiences in the last few years. Conrado and Vatea got on well from the start although Conrado didn’t put her and his dreams together yet the fact was a niggling presence, something he knew but hadn’t become aware of as a fact yet . Vatea knew about his dreams, as well as other people who were in Puerto. She wasn’t doing much talking but if she were, she’d have plenty to say!

It was getting later in the morning and they all decided to go to Chacahua and get a few beers and have a bit of a party. Chacahua is 20 kilometers or so west of Roca Blanca by sea. It was nothing more than a swamp when the slave ship, bound for San Francisco crashed there in the middle of the nineteenth century and all the slaves managed to escape and make their home on the beach and surrounding swamps. Its now a quiet fishing village, populated with Spanish speaking blacks. The three friends landed Conrado’s boat in front of a cantina on the beach, had some food and a few beers together. The natives were their usual friendly selves and treated these strangers with characteristic hospitality. They seemed to take a special interest in Vatea and soon she had a half dozen children playing at her feet. Al and Conrado were sitting under a ramada in plastic chairs enjoying the empty beach and watching the fisherman at work. Vatea decided to go for a little swim and walked down to the water with an entourage of little kids in tow. Conrado watched her as she dove into the sea and then turned to Al with a question on his face. Conrado told him about the orb and what he learned about the Izarian experiment. Yes, Vatea was an alien, but she was part human being as well! He told him what he had learned while reviewing the past observations that the Izarians had made on Earth and how he had found that he was part Izarian as well!

Conrado hadn’t seen Al for a long time and while what Al was telling him lent itself very well to disbelief, he couldn’t seem to question it. He was struggling with what he was being told and wanted to discount it as the ravings of a man gone over the edge but he couldn’t. Something about it seemed so perfect, as if it were something that was perfectly obvious and he was surprised he hadn’t thought of it before. It made him just a bit nervous.

The day wore on and as the beer bottles began to crowd the table, the conversation became a bit less serious. Conrado wanted to know when Vatea and Al were going to make some babies? That wasn’t the first question Conrado asked that Al couldn’t answer and although it was laughed off with a shrug, it was the seed of question and Conrado had planted it in the back of Al’s mind.

They talked about the old days in Puerto and all the characters that made the place what it had been. They guessed what this person might be doing or what had happened to that one. It was getting later in the day and Conrado was thinking about whether or not he would return to the city or spend the night. Vatea had been gone for hours, a fact that escaped Al but made it’s impression on Conrado. In the morning he’d met a woman and since she’d been gone, he’ d learned something about her that would surely change the way he looked at her. He wondered if she was the fisherman that Mr. Brown was. He was about to find out.

Al suggested that they return to the boat and hang there for a bit. Conrado asked Al about leaving Vatea since their boat was a long way from where they were. Al told him that she would catch up, no problem. They got some supplies and left the beach, heading back to Roca Blanca. As they were about to leave the mouth of the little bay Vatea’s head popped up just ahead. Conrado stopped the boat and she came along side laughing. She asked, “What, were you two leaving me here?” She climbed on board and they made there way east. The sun was an hour from setting. Conrado decided to spend the night and do some fishing the next day. He radioed back to Puerto about his plans. Vatea jumped ship when they got back to the boat saying she was going to get some dinner. They stowed the supplies and continued their conversation over a few more beers.

They talked long into the night, discussing subjects that ranged from the politics of their two countries and the blatant manipulation of the facts presented to each constituency, to the destruction of nature. Al asked about Conrado’s family and how they managed the transition, how he managed to keep his Latin blood from boiling. Conrado nodded the question off. It was the same story the world over; poor but intelligent people struggling against artificially manmade odds in order to make their way in life just a bit better. Not so much is it that they must sacrifice their pride but that they are the servants of a poorly executed plan that they’ve lost the power to change. Conrado’s bitterness was well insulated from exposure. Al was not interested in exposing it so their conversation turned away.

Vatea came to the stern of the boat with a net full of fluorescent reef fish. The sun was setting and the light played pastels in red and orange against her silhouette. Conrado looked at Al and then at Vatea. She was some woman and they both paused to admire her. She went about the work of preparing dinner as they all watched the sun setting. The fish tasted like lobster with drawn butter and, with rice they all soon found themselves in a food coma. Vatea soon fell off to sleep in a pile of nets.

Conrado wanted to know if Al was still writing. Al showed him the processor that Mr. Brown had built for him and all the things he’d written. Conrado wasn’t so interested in what he’d written but that he’d continued. Al had written a mountain. There were things written on subjects far and wide, all with his new born understanding. He knew Al had most likely lost contact with his “money tree” the publisher. He asked if he had plans to contact them again. Al said he had no plans.

Al showed Conrado the orb and told him about his first time inside it. He told him about how it worked and what it’s use was. They discussed what use it might have in this crazy world they were living. They talked about what these aliens lives might be like on Izaria. They talked long into the night and in the course of the evening they agreed that Conrado and Al would go on a fishing trip the following day.

Later that night Vatea woke up in a panic. She found herself wandering the decks. She was troubled by something but she was not sure what it was. He body seemed to be changing and she wasn’t able to put a reason to it. She finally fell asleep in Al’s hammock where he woke the next morning tangled with her. He asked her if she wanted to go fishing with he and Conrado. She declined saying that she just wanted to spend the day catching up on her log and inspecting the boat for it’s seaworthiness. As they lay in each others arms he could sense that this part of their life was soon to come to an end and yet, at the same time, he knew that at some point theirs would continue. He told her what he was feeling and what he thought and she gave him a look that all women are able to; that there are no words to explain what is happening and they’ll both just have to wait and see.

The chickens rose just before the sun did and with their rising, made their customary call to nature. The three all got out of their beds and greeted the day. They shared breakfast together and had a bit of a chat. There was a feeling of impending change and it brought a shroud of melancholy with it. Conrado got into his boat and prepared for a day of fishing with his long lost friend while Al and Vatea said their good-byes. They’d been together for a very long time and alone. They were never separated from each other since the day they’d met and it felt to them like they’d never see each other again. They both knew this day would come and it just seemed to sneak up on them. Al could tell that something was troubling this women that had become so important to him. He also could tell that there was no point in trying to get to the bottom of it right this minute. It would keep and perhaps be easier to put a finger on after a bit of thought. He climbed down the side of the boat he’d been living on for the last five years and into Conrado’s. The two old friends rode away and out of sight.

Vatea watched as they motored out of sight. She went to the orb and entered there and soon she learned what the matter was. The orb informed her that there were two beings now in the orb! She made her report home and there was much clamor there about her new development. The Izarians are not prone to quick decisions and, although Vatea was their vehicle, this situation had gone beyond a yes or a no answer. It was more a crossroad at which they had to choose in which direction to proceed. Vatea was happy about the situation and could not conceal her feelings. She spent the day in the orb and by days end the plans were made. She would conceal her condition from Al for a time. He still had a job to do and this would only serve to confuse him. There would be time for Al and Vatea later on and till then, nothing must distract him from his destiny.

Conrado and Al fished till almost mid-day where they found themselves near Chacahua again. They decided to go to the little cantina on the beach and have a few beers. They began to talk about Al’s writing and what he was going to do about it. Al had learned so much from the experiences that he’d had in the past years at sea but how could he tell his story without it becoming some sort of Science Fiction cult thing rendering him as some sort of nutter? He had much to say but he didn’t know where to start. Conrado asked him if he knew anyone that he could call in the U.S. that might be able to help him get back on the “literary horse” so to speak. They talked of other things, the South Pacific and the lovely time he and Vatea had there. Al told Conrado about Mr. Brown’s departure and the weeks of storm that preceded that event. Conrado told Al about the transformation of Puerto and what it was like living in the city now. After a few more beers a light bulb lit up over Al’s head; he would give his old friend Charlie a call in San Francisco and see if he could help Al get back in touch with his publisher. The two men caught a taxi and found a phone. Al made a collect call to Charlie’s house in San Francisco and found he did not live there most of the year. Seems he was living somewhere in Mexico. The maid had answered the phone and she dutifully took a message. As it turned out, she spoke Spanish and Al told her he was in Mexico and could he tell her where in Mexico Charlie could be contacted. She said he was living most of the year in a new city there called Puerto Escondido National! He was shocked into silence. There was a long pause. He finally gathered his wits and asked her if there was a number where he could be contacted. She gave him the number and wished him luck. Al tried the number but the whole city’s phone access was restricted and he didn’t have the access code. The call had to be made from within the city. Conrado was sitting at their table at a small cantina when the shocked Al Fwada returned to the table. He could see that Al was a bit confused. Things had changed so dramatically since he’d been gone and it seemed to him that it was one surprise after another. Charlie and he had been the best of friends and, although they’d gone their separate ways, they’d managed to keep in touch with each other over the years. He guessed that things had changed quite a bit since they’d last were in contact and this was a big surprise.

Conrado had spent a little more that the last 24 hours entertaining ideas that were so far from any neighborhood that he was familiar with that this seemed like a very insignificant development, still he wanted to help his friend sort this thing out. He told Al that if this man was living in Puerto Escondido National and he had a phone number, there would be no problem finding him and he could get a message to him. Al realized that he was getting things out of proportion but still, he was having a bit of a hard time dealing with all the things that had changed and he also realized how difficult it still was for him to deal with it unless he was the one entertaining the change.

Fortunately that’s not the way things work on the Earth, or anywhere else in the universe for that matter. There were plenty of people hoping to make a change and soon! Al didn’t know it yet but there was a very large group of people that were soon going to be in his corner and he had a secret weapon. It was such a secret that he didn’t know he had it and wouldn’t till after the battle had been won!

THE CIRCLE SEEMS FLAT

When Al and Conrado returned to the boat, anchored at Roca Blanca, they found Vatea in entertainment mode. She had spruced up the boat and tied a sarong on in such way that defied physics. She also prepared a large meal for them. She’d put plenty of beer on ice and was in a gregarious mood, just a bit out of character for her. She made an obvious attempt to befriend Conrado and Al went along with her plans wholeheartedly. By the time dinner was over the two of them were chatting like old friends and talking about the old times he and Al had had. Conrado at first was a bit unsettled by the fact that she knew about everything they’d ever did, even some things that he and Al had completely forgotten. Just around sunset, while everyone was feeling the glow of great friends and a few beers too many, Vatea asked Conrado if he wanted to spend a bit of time in the orb. He was a bit reluctant but the alcohol in his system had over-amped his better judgment and so he accepted her offer. Al was surprised that Conrado was even considering it, let alone following Vatea up the little staircase and to the painted door. She opened the door and told him that he should just relax and follow her lead and everything would be just fine. In the meantime Al grabbed another beer and reclined in his hammock to watch. Vatea took his hand and led him in. There was no turning back now and so Conrado followed her in. There, after she was able to get him to relax, she lowered the orb out of the little boat and down into the sea. Conrado went through all the anxiety that Al had and then some! He didn’t swim very much and didn’t feel comfortable with being under water. Vatea was very good at getting people to let go of their fears as that was one of the criteria for placement on Izaria for her job. It only took a few minutes and Conrado was breathing normally and had opened his eyes. After a few minutes she showed him how to do some simple manipulations and soon he was getting information on his own there. She let him find out about her secret and that it was to remain secret from Al for the time being. He acknowledged the fact and smiled for her, letting her know that it would be their secret. While Conrado was looking around under the sea and playing in the orb, Vatea planted the dream seed in Conrado’s mind. The plan was complete! Mission accomplished!

They were gone for a bit over an hour and when they returned Al was sleeping. Conrado and Vatea didn’t want to wake him so they talked a little while. Vatea told him that Al had to go back to Puerto for a couple years so that he could sort things out with his writing because she was convinced that that was the only way he would be happy. She also told Conrado that he should keep her and the boat his secret. Conrado said he understood and would return within a week. By then he would have been able to find Al’s publisher friend and, with any luck, get things back in gear for his old friend, as well as his new one. Vatea climbed into the hammock with Al and Conrado found his and they all fell off to sleep.

The next morning, when he went to launch his boat he found another Izarian going away present. Vatea had filled his boat with fish of every description and they were all enormous. Of course Vatea was nowhere to be found and he and Al had a laugh and Conrado was off, headed back to Puerto.

Al was getting antsy. He was so close to what he used to call home and he wanted to go back there. The week that followed was an anxious one and he was unexplainably nervous. He was having his carousel dream every night, over and over again and he wasn’t sure what it meant other than he should go back to the new city and find out. Vatea told him that if that’s what he wanted, it would be OK with her. He was beginning to wonder what it was that he should do and then, after being in the little bay for just ten days, Conrado returned.

There was a rift that had developed between Al and Vatea the day that Conrado arrived on the scene and it was bothering Al. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it but it was there nonetheless and he was straining to understand what it could be. He had the feeling that Vatea was pushing him away, as if she were going out of her way to cut the delicate strings that had attached the two to each other over the past few years of intimacy. The die was cast and they both knew it! Al was being torn between his desire for the idyllic life that he’d been leading with Vatea and the niggling seed that was growing in his mind. There was something looming on his horizon and although it was a vague feeling, it was undeniable. Soon something would happen and the way Vatea was acting, he felt that she knew something he didn’t. Al was about to embark on another journey into change and this would be is hardest test to date. Vatea would not be there to help him other than in spirit. She knew too much to worry about it and he knew enough for it to bother him. He felt like he was walking through a field of nettles and in his attempt to escape, became more tangled there, or he had fallen into a mire of quicksand and the more he struggled to escape there, the more he was trapped.

Conrado went back to Puerto Escondido National and was greeted by the city’s police. He’d been gone for two full days and, had it not been for the large amount of fish that Vatea had loaded aboard his boat, he would have had no excuse for his absence. After several hours of interrogation about his whereabouts they released him under an unpronounced cloud of suspicion. Conrado knew that the “secrets,” (which is what the partners called the unseen informers that had spirited away so many of the mal-contents), were going to be watching him. He was going to have to be careful if he was going to be able to help his friend Al without getting himself into trouble. He went home to his government provided home and fell to sleep. It was a troubled sleep, filled with forgotten dangers and vague warnings. When he woke, he was not rested and had a feeling of urgency, as if he was compelled to help Al even though he knew that it might bring with it sure destruction of the security he so carefully had built with the sacrifice of his own pride. He argued with himself, he struggled to put his promise to Vatea out of his mind. He had errands to do for his business and as he went about these he began to talk to himself, arguing, weighing his charge against what he knew to be the consequences. His stomach churned with the battle of indecision and he found he could not shake it. The phone number of the gringo, although he’d thrown it into the sea before he got back to the city had been burned into his mind. Each time he saw a phone box the number flashed before his mind and made him uneasy.

Five days went by and as they did Conrado was plunged into the world of nightmares. They were really just dreams but in the world he was living, such thoughts were dangerous. The thoughts he was entertaining were the product of dreams and they were dreams he could not forget. Finally he came to the conclusion that if he made the call all this anxiety would disappear. He went to a phone box. He wanted to make it as quick as possible.

Illiana answered the phone. They spoke Spanish. Conrado told her that he’d seen an old friend of her bosses and that he had a message from him. She asked Conrado who he was and he would not tell her. He said that if Charlie wanted to know more he was to go to the harbor and arrange a fishing trip with The PEN Fishing Company. That he knew what Charlie looked like and would make himself known. He hung up! He hopped with all his heart that the meeting would never happen. In this hope he was to be disappointed.

Each morning his job was to go to the wharf and see if there were any tourist that wanted to go sport fishing. Their names were typed out on the reservation list. He, or one of his other captains would take the charge out for the day. After the call, this simple task became a test of resolve. He hoped that he would never see the word, “Charles,” on that list but two days after his call, there it was, like some death sentence. He tried not to look nervous, to keep himself composed but it was a futile exercise. There was the man, standing on the wharf looking on. He gave the other two scheduled fishing trips to his other captains and, without introducing himself to Charlie, loaded the boat and prepared for the day. When he was ready he walked up behind Charlie and tapped him on the back. Trying to avoid his eyes, he motioned toward his boat and said that it was time to go. Charlie was a sport and although this Indian was being awfully mysterious, he didn’t feel threatened. He followed him to the boat and they motored away.

Charlie had known Al for some time and was aware of his disappearance or at least the version that his newly contracted publisher released to the news. He’d known Al for over 25 years and it didn’t seem likely that he was drowned in the sea surfing. There was “no body” and as a result, his newly acquired estate had been tied up in court ever since. Not surprising that his only published work was hotter than the libido of a seventeen year old virgin nymphomaniac! Needless to say, the idea of Al’s death for Charlie had lost it’s virginity. Charlie also knew about Al’s smoking habits and he also knew who Conrado was because he’d seen pictures of him and Al posing with game fish that he and Al had caught. As soon as they were a mile or so out he lit up a “Philly”, (very large joint nicknamed after the Philly Blunt Cigar).

Conrado’s heart was pumping like never before. He felt like there were eyes everywhere and he didn’t know Charlie except for what Al told him. Charlie sat at the front of the boat with his back to Conrado who was at the tiller. He was not relieved when the man lit the marijuana. He could picture “the secrets” lurking everywhere and the feeling “of eyes upon him” was making him crawl in his skin. Charlie took a few puffs, looking out to sea. He knew the man was sweating. He asked him, “how long do you want to go outside before you want hit of this?” Conrado said he didn’t use drugs. Charlie smiled to himself and asked, “So how is Al these days, how’s he doin’?” Conrado had heard of Charlie. Al talked about him many times on their wave hunts in the old days. He seemed like the same character, his look was similar to the photos Conrado had seen, still he felt like he was being set up. Everything was so easy if he followed the rules and he wondered why he felt compelled to follow through with this treacherous plan. He was silent for another while and Charlie puffed his “cigar.” Finally Conrado said “Al said hello.?” There was a pause. The horizon devoured the city. Conrado felt safer, out of range, hidden behind the curvature of the Earth.

Charlie took his line and began to talk about his old friend, Al Fwada. He talked for an hour, telling Conrado about things that only Al and he would know. Things about firsts; waves, joints, girls. It was an often visited memory for Charlie and he enjoyed it each time. It was a place he would like to go but the way of the world had wrenched it out of his hands, like a favorite toy that your cousin steals. He talked about the surfing trips they’d went on and all the crazy things they used to do. Charlie talked as if he were just reminiscing to himself, as if he were alone in the boat and he was just verbalizing the things that were going through his mind Conrado listened. As Charlie spoke, Conrado’s anxiety ebbed away.

The fish jerked! Charlie was every bit the fisherman that Al used to be. He let the beast strike again and set the hook. The fish breached, thrashing his beak towards the sky, then fell into the sea for one of its last times. Charlie played the fish into the boat in three attacks; each time, the fish would get next to the boat and when she saw it, she’d run. After 20 minutes the beast was lying on the deck, its dorsal fin already going from fluorescent blue to the tawdry gray of it’s death. Conrado was impressed.

Conrado asked Charlie when was the last time he’d seen Al. Charlie talked about the going away party they had in Santa Cruz just before Al left to live in the old Puerto Escondido back in 1992. How he had kept in touch with Al all those years, how he was the one who managed to get the book of poetry that Al had written, published and how he was planning a trip to visit Al when Al just seemed to disappear. He said he knew that Al had probably just decided to do a disappearing act. That money and fame were not very important to Al like it was for most people in his position.

Conrado told Charlie that he was very worried about helping Al because he was afraid that he would loose everything that he’d worked so hard to gain but because Al was such a good friend, he felt compelled to try. He told Charlie that Al was waiting just up the coast to hear from him. That he’d written a mountain of manuscripts and wanted to find out if there would be any interest.

Charlie told Conrado that, since Al was supposed to be dead, his one book of poetry had placed him in category all his own and although the publisher was doing everything in their power to prove his death, that chances were, they’d love to hear from him and would most likely want to print anything he could manage to come up with. As far as Conrado getting into trouble, Charlie said he would see to it that he was not only kept out of the picture of Al’s return but he would also be handsomely rewarded for his effort!

So it was arranged that Al would meet Charlie in the little town of Cacalotepec just a bit east of Puerto, in two weeks. By then Charlie would have enough time to sort out the details with Al’s publisher and procure him an entry visa into Puerto Escondido National. They’d all go fishing a month from now after Al was safely living at Charlie’s house.

By days end, Conrado felt much more at ease with Al’s friend. He hadn’t thrown caution to the wind but he no longer felt threatened by knowing the man. All that Conrado had to do was go up to Roca Blanca and tell Al what the plan was. It would be simple and he could go back to his old routine. Unfortunately things hardly ever are that simple. The danger was not in helping Al but the mere fact that Conrado knew Al and was good friends with him was to have a completely unexpected effect on his life. As far as Charlie was concerned, things were about to change in a very big way in his life; he might even manage to get some of his toys back!

The two men caught three fish that day, two sail fish and a rather large Dorado. They shared a few beers and a joint and became friends. Charlie said he would make a big stink about what a great time he had fishing with Conrado when they got back to the wharf to alleviate any suspicion their meeting may have caused. They motored back over the horizon and there was the city, looming defiantly against the Mexician continent. It was a panorama that was on the threshold of transformation and Al was going to become the flux.

SWIMMING ON AN EMPTY HORIZON.

Vatea and Al were struggling at the edge of change; Al was struggling to accept the coming inevitability who’s form he could guess and Vatea was wrestling with the doubt that, even though Al had made amazing progress, would he be able to see through his learned response and act in a new way?

Ten days after they’d seen Conrado last he came. Al and Vatea were sleeping and Al was awakened by the hum of the motor approaching. He knew who it was. He nudged Vatea awake and they went to the rail to greet him. It was smiles all round and the three friends had a bit of breakfast and passed the time of day for a bit. Conrado gave Al the message from Charlie. Al would meet him, no problem. Conrado told Al about the fishing trip they would all take together in a few weeks and told them he could not spend the day. He didn’t want to arouse any more suspicion about his fishing trips. He went on his way saying he would see them later.

Al was once again pitched into the flux when his friend left but only for a moment. He remembered the day he found out about Vatea and her feelings and he was determined not to give a repeat performance. He knew that Vatea could not leave the boat for more than a day or two and that she had to stay close. The harbor inside the break water in the new city would not be suitable anchorage for the likes of this boat anyway. It would stick out like a sore thumb. Al decided to go full into this transition and let things go as they must. He had surrendered himself to the fact that he had to do this thing even though he was not sure why.

Vatea was happy to see that he was not sinking into some retentive doldrums; that his mind was sharp, perhaps sharper than it had ever been. Al busied himself with gathering his writing together. He took stock of what he had written and filed it appropriately. He packed a bag of the few belongings he had been given over the last few years since he hadn’t any money for the entire period. While he was gathering and sorting himself for the move he found the coin that Mr. Brown had given him on that last day. He thought back to what he had said and he knew that this change was part of what his friend was talking about.

Al was excited. He knew he was going to do something important, something that would make a difference. He went into it with all the enthusiasm that a young boy goes to his first sports tryout. He began to write down ideas for magazine articles and books. He wasn’t interested in telling people something outrageous and unbelievable, he wanted to jog some memories, give people a reason to be excited about being alive and anxious to make a difference. He wasn’t sure what to expect and perhaps if he were he wouldn’t have been so anxious to go.

Vatea was happy to see him diving into the challenge. She was not particularly worried about what would happen now. Al had demonstrated that he was well up to the task ahead. She did her best to help him gather his life together for the adventure. As far as the “bardo” was concerned, it would stay her and Conrado’s secret for a time.

The meeting was scheduled for a Thursday and they were waiting at the appointed spot. It was very hot and Vatea kept going into the back to spray herself down. Finally Al succumbed to the heat and took her lead. He was just coming out of the back when Charlie and Rebecca arrived. Vatea knew them too and walked up to their vehicle to introduce herself. Al and Charlie gave each other a big hug, Charlie making references to Samuel Clement and Al laughing the whole time. They all settled down at the cantina that Al and Vatea were to meet them at and got aquatinted. Al and Vatea decided not to tell them about the boat just yet.

There was a large folder that Charlie brought with him and, after a good seafood spread and a table full of beers, he handed the file to Al. Inside there was money transfer slips! Lots and lots of money transfer slips, and news clippings about the disappearance of the author, Al Fwada, his reported death and the subsequent litigation to settle his newly acquired estate. Most of the clippings were over four years old. There was an envelope with $10,000 U.S. and two bank books, one was his Mexican bank account and the other was from a bank in San Francisco. Al was rich, richer than he ever imagined he would be. He showed Vatea and they both looked over the documents and clippings. Vatea was kicked in her funny bone by the clippings of Al’s supposed death by drowning. The money was a nice enough surprise but the news clippings were the subject for great hilarity. The four of them sat round, laughing and reading one clip after another, all with the tragic news and fictional details of the death of a promising new American author, Al Fwada. The jokes became morbid with a pinch of irony. Al slipped into party mode and announced, let the dead man by the next round,” and they all laughed.

They talked for hours and, as is often the custom, the men and the women ended up having separate conversations. Vatea enjoyed Rebecca’s company. She’d not spent any time speaking with a women of Earth and found it enlightening. Soon they became friends and Rebecca found that she quite liked this women. She asked Vatea where she was from and Vatea told her she was from a south sea island called Starbuck Island. Al over heard this and smiled and reached under the table and squeezed her thigh. They talked about babies and men. Rebecca did most of the talking and Vatea was a good listener. Rebecca was a happy women and carefree. She and Charlie had started out with just their feelings for each other, a hot plate and a micro-bus. As time went by, Charlie had become a success in the publishing business, recruiting talent from the large pool of friends he’d made while traveling with his sweetheart. He brought a few best sellers to the company he was working for and managed to start his own business. It was difficult at first but they had what they needed in each other so the struggle was more a challenge than a burden. Over the years he’d made a name for himself in the industry and attracted some of the better talents. He became a very rich man and found that he was working too hard. He was beginning to loose track of the things that were important to him so he and Rebecca decided to go traveling. That was about the same time that Al disappeared. They traveled the world and ended up in Puerto Escondido National. They liked it there because, as members of the population they were allowed to do as they pleased with impunity. They were nothing more than hippies with a bank account and Puerto Escondido National permitted them to pursue the things they liked. Charlie would travel to San Francisco twice a year, once with Rebecca for Christmas and once in the summer to check on his business in person. Other than that they spent their time traveling or in their beach house in the new city. They were happy and would probably stay that way.

In the envelope there was also an entry visa for Al Fwada for the city of Puerto Escondido National and during Charlie and Al’s conversation the subject of Vatea entering the city as well came up. Al told Charlie that he wasn’t sure how long he would stay in the city and Vatea was going to stay in their boat for the time being. Charlie said he wanted to see the boat but Al managed to change the subject and it didn’t come up again, at least that evening. They all stayed at a little hotel and greeted the next morning with a bit of a hangover.

Al was to travel with Charlie and Rebecca to the city and Vatea would stay behind. He would return in two weeks with Conrado and Charlie on their fishing trip. They all spent a lovely day together, playing in the sea and sunning themselves on the beach. It was time to go. It was the threshold and they all stepped over it. There was no turning back!

It was a typically hot sunny day in January. Rebecca, Charlie and Al arrived at the border crossing. Their papers were all in order and the guard said a special hello to Al, their newest resident. They traveled through the city, all gleaming and manicured, clean! There were large multi-storied hotels and big expensive cars with flags on their fenders. The street level was lined with shops with names like Gucci, Armani, Ferrucci and the like. There were banks on every corner like there are gas stations on every corner in Los Angeles. They drove past the harbor, where the waves used to be. It was filled with expensive yachts and lined with beach umbrellas. There was not the merest hint that there had been anything else on this beach ever. Al talked about what the place used to look like and his two friends listened as they motored through the new city.

They arrived at the beach house. It was a Mediterranean style home, open plan with large yards, a pool and a pool house with porches all round. Inside was bare rugged floors in the large main room and there was a small kitchen. There were two rooms off the main room; one had a large bed and the other was some sort of office with all the modern electronics available; several radios and TV’s, two computers and monitors, a few printers, a copy machine, a fax machine. Although Al thought he’d be here for a couple months, this he would call home for a little over the next two years.

The three had a barbecue that evening which the maid prepared. Her name was Illiana and she looked strangely familiar to Al. It was a time of new sights and sounds. They watched a video about attacking aliens from outer space that were defeated by a computer virus that was placed in their binary computer system. Al thought to himself, “If they only knew!” It was an exciting day for Al but at the end of it he felt he would like to go home to he and Vatea’s boat. He shooed the thought away. He had something to do here. He thought it was to make contact with his publisher and sort his business out with them, then get back to Vatea and the life he’d come to love.

The next day they all got up and had breakfast. Charlie gave him a list of numbers he would need to deal with his publisher. He showed him how to access the computer and use the fax machine. He told Al that later they would all go to the beach for the afternoon. Of course the publisher knew that Al had been located because Charlie had called them and arranged to get the folder. They were beside themselves with excitement. They wanted to come down and meet him or fly him north for a meeting. Al wasn’t too excited about going so far away from where he called home so it was arranged that the publisher would come calling at weeks end. Al spent the rest of the morning entering a story into one of the computers and later they all went to the beach. He kept looking for a face he would recognize from the old days. They were all gone!

He spent the week like that and by the time the publisher arrived, he had a story ready for them. The agents that came were the same ones that had come to his casita so many years ago. It was nice for Al to see a face he recognized from the past and they had a good meeting. They showed him all the news bytes that he got as the result of his book after his disappearance. They told him his life and his writing had become a gold mine and asked him not to disappear again. He was given a new contract because the old one had passed the expiration date. They all went out to dinner on the wharf that evening and got a bit drunk. The deal was pretty much the same as the one before. He was given a laptop computer for his work and an emergency number he could call from anywhere in the world. They wanted him to make contact at least once a month. The next day the publishers left with Al’s story and contract in hand.

From the very first day Al arrived in PEN he began to have vivid dreams. Dreams so real that he couldn’t tell the difference between the reality of his sleep and the hard tactile world he was physically stuck in. The carousel dream had faded and in it’s place came the dream of Vatea beckoning him to come and bring the people. With one hand she would wave for him to come and in the other there was a small child. He couldn’t seem to move and she would get farther and farther away or, in his paralyzed state, he could not seem to follow. He was not sleeping very well as a result and began to get up in the middle of the night and write. He could remember the dream with sharp clarity and it was haunting and frustrating. He wanted to go back to the boat and resume his idyllic life with her. He didn’t tell anyone about the dream but he was having it every night.

On average, humans sleep one third of their lives and of this large portion they know very little. It is a void filled with strange and alien forces that are never fully understood and for some not even acknowledged. If a human being is to live 75 years that would mean that that same person will sleep 25 years of their life. Over the past five years Al had begun to realize how important his dreams were but he was crap when it came to distilling the meaning out of them. The dream of the carousel was so complicated and diverse that gleaning some sense out of it was near impossible for the likes of Al but the dream that he was having now was clear and simple with the exception of Vatea’s request that he bring the people. He thought if he were to go to the boat and speak with Vatea or spend a bit of time in the orb, it would be come clear.

Al talked to Charlie about going fishing soon with Conrado. He enjoyed his friends company but as is so often the case, both of the men had changed and Al had yet to feel comfortable with this new environment that he was living in. He wanted to go back to his old life, the one he’d become accustomed to. Charlie could tell that Al was beginning to feel like a trapped animal and so he arranged to go fishing the following day. Al packed his few belongings in a gym bag and was ready for his return. He felt relieved that he would not be spending much more time here. That night his dream was more real and yet perplexing than ever.

Charlie woke before sunrise to find Al drinking his third cup of coffee. They’d arranged to have the maids husband pick them up and take them to the wharf. Conrado was there and the boat was ready for the trip. They set out, Al was excited to go home and Charlie, who had yet to see the boat was conjuring in his mind what this boat might look like. Al had told him nothing at all about it, saying just wait till you see it. They motored past Punta Colorado and west toward Roca Blanca. It was a day that Al would visit in his mind again and again because when they arrived in the little crescent bay the boat was gone and so was Vatea. Charlie could see Al was despondent, crushed and lost. They went to the cantina to ask about where she might have gone. No-one knew. Apparently she’d left in the middle of the night a few days earlier and left no word about where she was heading. Al felt like he’d been betrayed and lied to. He was shaken to his very soul and there was no consoling him. It was a quiet day of fishing and there were no smiles the day long. A thousand questions were flying through Al’s head and a thousand answers. He couldn’t believe that she was gone and he thought he was trapped in some sort of nightmare! They made their way back to the wharf in silence. Al thought it was over, finished, that he’d learned all he was going to from the Izarians and he was now on his own!

After that day Al became an insomniac, wandering from bar to bar, searching for a bottle that would enable him to forget what he’d come to love. It was destined to be a long period of denial for him but the dream continued to visit his fitful sleep and he was beside himself with grief still he was unable to deny that he had acquired something that before he’d met the Izarians he would never had guessed existed.

TWO YEARS LATER

In seven the years that Puerto Escondido National had been in existence the world had changed not one little bit. Oh yes, there was new and amazing technology that promised to create a better lifestyle for human beings but the rest of the planet was still on the skids and sliding fast toward some abyss that seemed eminent. From the point of view of any plant or animal on this planet, human beings had become frightful and unwelcome neighbor who was forcing the property values down. The sky was filled with more poison, the sea was becoming a salty plastic bag soup and the earth was landfill. Humankind had built beautiful gardens and lovely avenues for themselves to live in. As a result they had pushed the “unwanted” or “user unfriendly” into a irreversible retreat. There didn’t look like there would be any turn around from the obsessive growth fixation that humankind was dragging the rest of the creatures of the planet into.

Their was a coin in Al Fwada’s socks drawer that had a prophetic message for the world and, as usual, it was being ignored. One day he drilled a hole in it and wore it as a necklace from that day on.

Because Vatea disappeared, Al was dumbfounded and the dream not only continued but others joined in and he developed a sleeping disorder. (Seems a common malady in this chronicle?) As a result, Al had become a dejected artist, drinking copious amounts of Mescal and being chased by the demons of dreams who’s meaning he could not discern. Life with Charlie and Rebecca was easy. He had is own space and they left him to his own devices, rescuing him from his drama when it went a little too close to the edge.

There was the episode with the European virtuoso who liked to get drunk on new and different concoctions of liquor Al spent the best part of a month teaching him to be a connoisseur of Mescal. There was the scene where Al thought he was a bull fighter and the cars with flags were the bull. Then there was the night he made a play for the wife of the Prime Minister of Italy and when that didn’t work he jumped into the pool and stayed on the bottom till they pulled him out and had to restrain him till they could arrange a ride home for him. He disappeared for two weeks when they found him sleeping in an alley behind the market and food processing factories. He was naked. He became the “loose gun” in the city and everyone knew who and what he was. Al Fwada, drunk.

The things he’d learned from Mr. Brown and Vatea about the irresistibility of change were still within his mind but they had become garbled and obscured by his innate perceptions . It was a lamentable situation but it was also part of the process of revelation. As an obscure Baptist Preacher once said, “pain is part of the process of revelation,” and, although Al was not a Baptist, he was certainly in pain and searching the bright lights and dark alleys of his world to find reason. It was a process that would take two years and a lick but he didn’t know that. Que sera.

Jud and Re-Fried didn’t know reason either, drunk or sober. It would take much longer for them, and the likes of them to get through the process and perhaps we’ll turn them into fruit flies later and give them a chance but that would just be part of the process as well. The question is, can the human form learn from the experience of rocks and if that existence of the human form can learn from that experience, what is it that their minds might conjure with that experience? Jud and Re- hadn’t been in Puerto since April of ‘96. It didn’t matter where they were during their lives and although we know “the circle never ends,” it is always changing rendering it as a sort of spiral and rotating round another object who’s attraction is more powerful and who has changes of it’s own! There is a sort of an invisible glue that holds them together, similar to the electrical charge that atoms use for the same purpose or the gravitational pull that stars and planets have that hold them together, all in a circle and all spiraling in constant change. It appeared to Jud and Re- that their actions were effecting a positive change in terms of money. Money is the invention of mankind and although it is made of matter it’s form is not a natural one and will, at some point be forgotten as will it’s inventors. We’ll put all of it into the same match box with what we know of Ozmandius! Till then Jud and Re-Fried will serve to push the situation over the brink with aid of their scatoma (narrow-minded perceptions).

The city was in flux. There was a malignancy growing in the form of nightmares. It was something that Al made one drunken night and had been wearing ever since. He would look in the mirror and it would be there, starring back at him. It was a passive object or appeared to be. It’s power of suggestion could never had been guessed at still the seeds of it’s message, cryptic as they were, were finding their way into the minds of most who looked at it, even just one glance. Then the dreams began. Slowly at first but with the passing of the days, the dreams would appear and re-appear till they became obsessive. In a society where individual ideas were held suspect, discussing such personal conflicts was dangerous. As Al wandered through the city, the crop of disillusionment grew and then was hidden, like a ulcer who’s appearance was too hideous to be revealed. It was something that few of the visitors were susceptible to, but all of the “partners” who came in contact with Al were smitten straight away. After a year of Al aimlessly wandering in and around the city, he had the occasion to come in contact with most all the partners and slowly the exodus began. Some were made ill by the revelations that were revealed in their dreams. They were no longer suited to the strict regimentation that was required to work in the city. They were re-located and replaced by newly recruited “partners.” Others managed to keep their secret and suffered the doubt that accompanies the belief that something is terribly wrong and would soon be rectified.

There were three basic dreams that people were having. Many women were having the dream that Illiana was obsessed with; standing on a promontory and holding some sort of tablet in one arm and beckoning to the sea. The dream was not frightful in the context of sleeping but it’s re-occurrence was haunting. Illiana spent hours looking for a explanation for this dream. It was not until she told Rebecca about it that she felt she was not alone and loosing her mind. Rebecca and Illiana shared their dreams with each other and realized that there was some connection. The two women embarked on a investigation using the modern communication devises that were in Charlie’s office and although they found some similarities in some ancient and obscure records, there was no direct correlation between Rebecca’s and Illiana’s dreams. Had they been able to access the Izarian historical accounts their bags would have packed themselves. Psychosomatic maladies of unexplainable sources were cropping up all over the city and were debilitating. Many of the partners were forced to leave the “city of dreams,” ironically because of their dreams. It was as if being in the city was terrifying, rendering these first emigrants paralyzed, unable to perform even the simplest of tasks. The central government didn’t notice the trickle for some time and when it finally became aware of the situation, their remedy was akin to the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike!

Guillermo began to have a dream of his own and was able to keep it secret from the woman he loved for a time. She discovered it one evening when he was sleeping in front of his TV. It too was not a nightmare in that it was fearful but it was dream that re-occurred and he was not happy with it. His dream was simple and easy to understand. He saw he and his family at the airport with all their belongings. They were leaving the city for good. Guillermo had made a small fortune in this place and was not anxious to leave, still his dream made him feel like he had to for some reason or other. He’d managed to keep this feeling to himself for the best part of a half year. One evening he was lying on the couch, wrestling with his sleeping reality and Illiana was watching him, wondering what it was that was making him fidget so. He seemed to be fighting something and she knew he was dreaming about something that was causing him a conflict. She watched him for a while as his face contorted and he clinched his fists in struggle. There was something he was not able to come to grips with and she wanted to get to the bottom of it. She shook him awake and, he spilled the frijoles. The dream by itself revealed Guillermo’s fears of loosing something that he’d come to feel comfortable with. It was a typical case of a trade off; Guillermo had sacrificed his pride in order to provide for his family. He wasn’t in agreement with what was going on in this city but he was unable to do anything other than accept it of leave. His position was the same as it was for all the other “partners.” It was a “fixed crap game” and they were all playing with the same loaded dice when someone bent the table!

As more and more partners began to leave the city because of the dreams they were having, news of those dreams leaked out to the Mexican radio stations that were in the area. A late night talk show host was the first one to put three of the dreams together and hinting that they were somehow related to some sort of collective prophecy about the destruction of the hated city. He talked on the subject for a month before Al heard the program It was a late night show that “went by” on the dial for most people.

The people who listened to that Mexico City radio spot were just passing the time, like night security guards and Al Fwada. He was one of these late night sentries, waiting for the light of day to relieve him from the clutches of exhaustion and the dreaded dreams of his restless sleep. Something in his mind clicked when he happened to tune in the program. He’d had similar dreams as the ones being described on the radio and all the dreamers were people who had lived in Puerto Escondido National and since, moved away! He wanted to find out more and so he decided to talk to some of the people he knew about their dreams. The conclusions that he could draw were much broader than what he’d heard on the radio and there was a great deal he could fill in if he managed to keep his hands off his bottle of Mescal long enough for his thoughts to become lucid. He was excited for the first time in two years and in those two years he hadn’t slept very much. He too was suffering from dreams who’s meaning he couldn’t even guess at or just failed to guess! It had been a long time since he’d felt like he wanted to do anything. He’d spent far too long feeling sorry for himself and it was time for him to get back on his horse.

Al hadn’t been fishing for months when he called his friend Conrado. They had a bit of a chat and planned to go for a trip to Chachaua the next day. The two old friends met on the wharf and headed out early the next day. Al had gone fishing with Conrado fishing several times after he’d found Vatea had gone in hopes of finding he and the boat anchored in Roca Blanca but it was not to be. He’d given up and after running over the thousand possible explanations for her sudden departure he settled on the idea that Vatea had a mission on this planet that he didn’t know about and it didn’t include him! He was in a sorry state and his friend Conrado knew it.

There wasn’t much to talk about between Al and Conrado. Their worlds were very different; Al with his seemingly endless supply of cash and connections that seemed to get him out of any situation and Conrado with his high visibility and endless unseen paranoia that the “Secrets were watching.” There worlds were made up of two entirely different sets of rules and the chasm, although not mutually created, was artificially imposed. In short, Al could most likely get away with murder and Conrado had to be careful where he spit! It was an awkward first half hour till Al lit a joint. Conrado couldn’t even think about smoking any longer for fear of the “secrets” and when one of his many clients lit up he was compelled to decline for fear that they were informers. He could trust that Al was not one of these. The atmosphere lightened up and the two old friends began to talk about old times.

Reminiscing is always a warm place for old friends to visit and with the smoke their attitude became further brightened. By the time they caught their first sailfish they’d managed to re-kindle their old rapport. Al, with his new sense of interest brought up the subject of recurring dreams during their conversation and it opened the floodgates of Conrado’s mind. As it turned out, Conrado’s mother had been having these dreams for near two years now and she was getting ill as a result. She had the dream once a week and she didn’t like the implication of it! In her dream, on a clear day, the city of Puerto Escondido National was to be wiped away by a great wave and all that was there would be gone, leaving only the beach. She thought she was loosing her mind and she was afraid to talk about it to anyone for fear she would jeopardize the few things she and her family had managed to attain. Conrado was entertaining the idea of moving away from the city to another beach town, one that was a bit less regimented. He’d saved all the money he could and had enough to move the whole family. It seemed like the only thing he could do that would keep his mother from loosing her sanity. Conrado hadn’t set the date for his move but he was looking into a few areas and was going to make a decision in the next month or so. Al had never heard Conrado talk so much but what he was hearing confirmed what he was beginning to suspect; these dreams were the work of alien forces that were bent on the destruction of the city and he knew who the aliens were! He hadn’t talked to anyone about his dreams and what he thought they meant because what they meant was only now becoming clear to him. He started to tell Conrado about what he had been thinking, about his dreams and what Mr. Brown told him before he left for Izaria. The two men talked for hours as they were fishing and soon it was time to go back to the city; a place they’d become convinced was about to be wiped off the face of the earth!

The radio program that night had a new caller and he had some fairly revealing things to say. At first the radio announcer thought he was just another nut case, bored and lonely and just wanting to hear his voice on the air where he knew people would hear it. He went on and on, talking about aliens from outer space and dream seeds that they had planted in his mind. The announcer had to go to a commercial but kept the man on the phone. When the new caller got back on the air he told the story about his dreams and the dreams of some other people that were still living in the town and how their dreams and the people who had left the city because of their dreams were all connected by their dreams. He went on to say what he thought the connected dreams meant; in short that the city of Puerto Escondido National was to be destroyed by the sea, specifically by a large circular wave and that wave would sweep the city away, leaving nothing. The radio announcer was intrigued because he had a “live one” on the line. This was the kind of caller that boosted the ratings and made his show, late as it was, one that the late niters would tune into. Suddenly Al heard a strange new sound coming through the line and he looked over at the phone board that Charlie had installed. There was a red light that just came on over the word “tap.” He hung up!

He was still listening to the radio and heard the announcer asking him to call back and apologizing for the abrupt end to this callers talk. Al felt elated, he felt alive for the first time in a very long time and, although it was the middle of the night, he was very much awake. He had been drinking all afternoon but he felt as lucid as he’d ever felt. He went over to his computer and began to write some ideas down; ideas about how he could bring the people and come away from the City of Dreams!

THINGS BEGAN TO WARM UP

Al didn’t know it but there was a great deal of energy on his side of this crap game and they were all pulling for him to roll the dice! He had! He was finally ready. He’d fallen asleep, using his lap top as a pillow. He had a conversation with himself while he was sleeping. His dreams had become more like excerpts from several movie leaders’ bits of the carousel dream mixed with the dreams of others that he’d been told and dreams he’d had in his past. They seemed brighter now, as if there were a light at the end, and there was Vatea, beaming from the rail of the boat, becoming him to “come along.” Mr. Brown was whispering in his ear too when he woke up. That’s what Mr. Be was whispering, “Get up,” and he did. It was near eight o’clock in the morning.

He could see there was activity in Charlie’s house through the blinds. Al rubbed his eyes and peered a bit closer. There was Charlie, sitting in his bathrobe staring down into a cup of coffee. Illiana was sitting at the table too and her husband was standing behind her watching Rebecca. Rebecca was pacing back and forth in front of them explaining something in a very agitated way. Al watched for a few minutes. Charlie would look up and nod every now and then and the taxi driver, with his hands on Illiana’s shoulders, would look down into his wife’s uplifted face. Each of them in turn would look out towards the pool house as if something of concern to all of them was out there. Of course they couldn’t see that Al was watching the whole time. Al put on one of his sarongs and took a step outside to the pool where he promptly dropped the thing and dove in, in his skivvies. He went straight to the bottom and relaxed for a bit, feeling the water surround him. He looked up through the water and, one after another, the four appeared at the pools edge.

When he finally came up they all began to talk to him at once. He climbed out of the pool and dried himself off and sat down at the pool side table. By now they all were quiet when Charlie started in. “Guillermo here says he heard you on the radio last night. Says you had some pretty scary things to say Al?” Al went into his spiel. He explained how he happened to find out about the double meaning of the phrase, City of Dreams and the many coincidences that were surrounding the dreams. They all began to speak again and when order returned and they all had their say. What they found out was that they all had similar ideas. The were all very excited.

Al was feeling quite confident by now and thought he might take it a step further. That’s when Guillermo stepped in! He announced that the word on the street was that the “secrets” were going to come down hard on Mr. Al Fwada and there were heavy odds that he would soon disappear! (That’s not the only thing that was going to be “disappeared!”) As it turned out there was a huge Black Market afoot in the “city of dreams” and Guillermo was well a part of it. They were controlling everything in their subtle way and had a secret communication method. They’d even managed to identify some of the “secrets” and that had been a useful tool although the odds were slim that the “secrets” were going to do anything but disappear themselves.

There were 13 UFOs in the NASA radar screens and they were playing havoc on the sensibilities of the (in)Security systems of the different countries of the world. (They were countries at the time but in actual fact, these separations were nothing more than human inventions; “countries;” their reason is dubious at best and alienating all the time!) The governments of the world were going apeshit and they all “loaded their guns.” Meanwhile the Izarians were observing the whole scenario from their lofty vantage point. Things were moving along quite nicely.

The U.F.O. or United Federation of Ozmandia were all there! This group of creatures were quite benevolent in the human sense of the word and they had been working with the Izarians on this project since it’s advent. As a group, and as members, the UFO were not the world destroying dominators that they had been made out to be. Many humans denied that other intelligence’s existed at all, but these were real aliens and they were real intelligent. They had been, and continued to be, creatures of reason who had managed to tackle the dilemmas of their natures and bring them under control. They still had imaginations to contend with and so they traveled. It seemed reasonable that when they found something that captured their interest, they were intrigued and due to the vast amounts of leisure they had, were able to look deeper.

Long ago these creatures were attracted to this planet because of the beautiful seas that were here. It was a vacation spot. Things changed, as they have the habit of doing in this universe and when this rather intelligent beast crawled out of the swamp. The Izarians called them Human Beings and they took a special interest in them. They befriended these beast and tried to teach them simple things. The human beings absorbed all the information they could and yearned for more.

The Izarians were the ones who got the UFO involved because they thought that the Human Beings were so intelligent that, with time, they could become equals. It was an interesting project and the Izarians took the lead. After their big push, with the miscegenation of Izarians and Human Beings, and all the special education that they provided, the Human Beings still held on to some of their bad habits; namely, possessiveness and inflexibility, and by now, most of the UFO were “marginally unimpressed” and the rest of their group were aligned with the Izarians being; “forced to drastic measures!”

Vatea had known about what was to pass. It was a last ditch effort on the part of the Izarians. They were in hopes that they could begin with “one” and, over several thousand Earth years, could bring these Human Beings in line with the rest of the Earth’s nature. During Mr. Browns term on the planet these beings had begun to destroy everything around them and the place was being plunged into squalor. There was an intrinsic flaw in their nature and it defied all reason! Their planet was a garden; beautiful and self sustaining but the Human Beings were bent on, “fixing something that was not broken,” by turning the place in to a colossal parking lot. It had to be turned around! Al was their vehicle and the boy, who was now almost two years old, was their seed of change. The lesson was sort of like showing a child the need to take out the trash and keep the place tidy. “Mom had been away for a while but she had come home and was not very happy.”

Vatea had left Roca Blanca the same day Al went to PEN. There was nothing else for her to do for the time being. She went back to Starbuck Island and had her baby on the island where she spent the best of a year and a half nurturing it. She made quick and long lasting friends with the islanders who remembered her from her previous visit. They helped her with the birth and she, in turn, gave them some useful information regarding some of their superstitions. When her child was old enough, she set out for the coast of America. She had someone to pick up and she only had a little over six months to do it.

The reported satellite activity was causing all sorts of havoc. UFO was well aware that their presence was causing a security breach which was just what they expected. The control freaks on the planet were frustrated beyond experience. If the objects they were monitoring had all appeared over the same spot on the planet then they could discern that they were the property of a particular country but that was not the case. If the objects were orbiting in a normal way they could have identified those objects with their communication satellites. That wasn’t the case either! NASA and their affiliates had concluded that these objects were in fact, UFOs who were in orbit around their planet. This was the question that was flooding the chemical receptors in more than one brain on Earth; were the alien satellites there to begin their domination?

Suddenly tried and true enemies were sitting across the table from each other trying to figure out what to do next. Secretly, governments and their military counterparts were in a state of alert, expecting to be attacked at any moment. Publicly there was nothing happening at all, and there never would be! The bovine were well caged but, which side of the bars is outside? The presence of the Alien satellites was putting a new perspective on “that question.” (As any Freemason will tell you, land ownership is a dubious investment; it’s more ownership by occupation and might. The Australian Aboriginal knows this basic tenet as do many other indigenous people who have been disposed by one group or another? The American Indian laughed when the European offered to buy land from them but of course they had a little better grasp of the, “Big Picture.” Then there was the Atlantian Continent disappearing lock stock and barrel? Mother Nature as the owner of the planet and fighting off an unwelcome invader: humans call that a “Natural Disaster.” The UFO was not there to look into real estate! They were into designer weather and, with any luck, the Human Beasts of the planet Earth would soon begin to understand that the UFO wanted them to take care of their home as is!)

As you know, the weather patterns at this time were in the process of a pivotal change, due to mismanagement, or so the Human scientists had deduced. Of course they had around two hundred years to collect the information they used to come to this conclusion so their perspective was, to say the least, a bit narrow! The UFO had witnessed phenomenon on this planet that the humans of that period had no experience of, so the UFO planned to give a demonstration and; “unleash the fury of the spurned women, ”namely, Mother Nature! They were flying in equidistant elliptical orbits round the Earth and were in the process creating an energy matrix around the planet which they began to focus at the mutual intersection point of each of their orbits.

On their arrival, the weather promptly began to defy all climate patterns. Not surprising, this information did not escape the scrutiny of NASA and their coconspirators. As the UFO was able to get their systems up to speed, they focused their energy on the South Pacific and there they created a small whirlpool. (Round and round we go!) It went un-detected for a week. They began to move it north. By the time it was picked up it was a 1000 meters round and getting taller as well. The likes of it had never been seen and there was no record of such a meteorological phenomena. It was scary and there wasn’t shit anybody was going to do about it. Strangest of all, there were no accompanying winds that would cause something like this as in a water spout or tornado.

The UFO matrix slowly made it’s way north and after the first week it was on course. NASA was able to chart it’s course as well; straight across 7000 miles of open ocean toward the southern coast of Mexico, where it would impact if it didn’t dissipate first; anywhere between Acapulco in the north to the Mexican/Guatemalan border! The Human Beast had plenty of time to get out of the way of this irresistible force! One more week to be exact!

There was someone at the front gate at Charlie’s house. They all went quiet when they heard the buzzer and Charlie picked up the pool side phone to see who it was. It was a stranger asking for Mr. Al Fwada. Charlie said he was not there so the stranger asked when he might find him at home? Charlie said he was not sure but could he take a message? The stranger answered no. When Charlie hung up they all knew why the stranger had come.

Later that day NASA secretly released their findings to the worlds governments regarding the whirlpool and it’s projected impact zone: Puerto Escondido National, Oaxaca, Mexico! ETA, Monday, April 1st, 2002.

Jud and Re-Fried got the news through the usual sources. That was to be the third day of their first visit there. There was a big celebration planned. Dignitaries from all over the world were flying into the city for the celebration. Presidents and other riff raff were going to be there. Or were they? Jud and Re-Fried were sitting at that same cantina where they first talked about building the city. It was an out of the way place in Mexico City but it held a sentimental value for the two beauracrats. They’d become heroes. Men of vision and tonight they met at the cantina to look into the rear view mirror. Trouble was racing up on them and they’d managed to hide from it once. Were they feeling brash and bold, thinking, “our technology will plug the dam!?” Did they believe that? Yes! The bulwarks they’d built were impenetrable, an immovable object! Any whirlpool would be no match for their fail safe planning. The buildings were designed for the worst. Theirs was an attitude of “ridin’ out the storm” and “damm the torpedoes” and that sort of non-sense. They were reveling in their grandeur.

The flies, fifty third generation removed from their ancestors who were at the first meeting were just as cynical as the rest of mother natures creatures with the likes of these two. They were drinking merrily from the tables fare of Tequila and other chemical substances. They were following in their ancestors foot steps. Re- and Jud had big plans and, as they went over them, some of the flies left, others remained. Change was afoot! Greed’s deal with chance had took a turn for the worse and the shit was about to hit the fan! All the appropriate clichés and metaphors were on alert. Some of the flies began to leave for the City of Dreams. It went un-noticed as so many things do. Jud and Re- ordered another round of Margaritas. They were sitting fly-less an hour later. They didn’t notice.

There were to be two days of anguish, two days of “holding up” in Charlie and Rebecca’s house, wondering what the authorities were going to do about Al. They had discovered a common thread; dreams. They had two days to discuss this subject. They talked about their dreams. They talked about why so many people in the city had had the same one and what it all might mean. Al, who was the most likely to have answers for them didn’t say much. His mind had vacated. It was empty. It was an annoying fact for the others. Guillermo had heard Al speak and knew that it was him. Guillermo was a man who always stuck to the straight and narrow. He loved his mother and he loved his wife and children. He had been tossed a hot rivet and he was expected to catch it. He would!

The radio broadcast concerning “Dreams” that fateful night caught Guillermo’s attention and he listened in. He had become desperate. Illiana was obsessed with her dreams and it was becoming something that Guillermo could not control. It made him uncomfortable. He wanted to find an answer that would put the whole thing to bed and they both could get on with their lives. It was something that was well off track of the “straight and narrow.” With the knowledge that many others had been visited by the same vision, Guillermo felt that he could not ignore what was so plainly obvious, still he was pensive. He felt that Al could clarify things for him but an explanation was not forthcoming. It made Guillermo uneasy and although it was something that would evaporate with time, he was going to have to run the whole race to be finished with it.

Illiana and Rebecca had spent a great deal of time in the past year or so discussing their dreams and what they might mean. They had become like sisters and would remain friends all he rest of their lives. Still the dreams that Illiana had did not seem to fit somehow. It had yet to become clear to her how her dream fit in with the others and perhaps it never would. There seemed the glimpse, a thread in her dream that fit with the rest. The fact that so many had dreamt the same dream and were acting on it was a very powerful factor. She was still not convinced that something was truly going to happen.

After the “stranger” made his call they all realized that something was afoot. Why else would the “secrets” be interested in some late night talk shows guest and his alcohol induced ravings? It was a subject that Guillermo was able to answer with ease. Seems that recently the turnover of “partners” had reached critical mass. Partners were leaving the city at an alarming rate and the Central Government was struggling to keep people on. The partners had been leaving for the last year, at first just a trickle but, as Al made his rounds and the dream seed found it’s way into the imaginations of more of the “partners”, the exodus grew faster and faster. The Central Government was searching for a reason why.

The radio program was there first real clue because none of the emigrants gave the real reason for their departure. The fact that Al was not one of the partners and he was an international celebrity made his abduction a bit more tricky than what the “secrets” were used to. The visit to Charlie’s house was a hopeful ploy and they were hoping that Al wouldn’t remember ever making the call. It didn’t work out that way and now it seemed that they’d played their card pre-maturely. In addition, Charlie and his family were well respected members of the community and although the “secrets” were less than impressed with his choice of friends, they couldn’t very well just bust into his house and search the place! They only had two days as well and when the news of the whirlpool took to the media, what was a turnover problem would grow exponentially, ultimately consuming the entire population.

This was the state of affairs in PEN when Jud and Re-Fried arrived in the city. Amid great fanfare, sautéed in a undercurrent of tension, the two men were greeted by a brass band on the runway of the airport and the Army, in full dress, saluted dutifully. These were the men that only seven years previously had taken an otherwise indiscript tourist town and turned it into an international benchmark for new cities of the twenty-first century. They were well respected in the country, and the world. It was a great honor to be a part of, or just see the arrival of these (skumbags), hrumph, great men. This was a celebration that had been talked about and anticipated for three or four years. Most of the local officials owed their wealth to these men. Their wives their children all were there.

In a parade of opulence the world had never before seen, the two men were showcased through the center of town. It was a beautiful day. Hot. People from all over the world were there. They had grandstands on either side of the street and the guest were all dressed in the latest fashions. The festivities gathered behind the limousine as it made it’s way down the boulevard. They all followed the car down to the “El Presidente”, the biggest, tallest, baddest mutha of all the hotels in the city. The party began! All the biggest names in entertainment were there, Jimi Hendrix did not make an appearance although there was a rumor to the effect. Someone did see Elvis (thank god.) It was a smashing success, and, like the party that Walt Disney threw for his staff after they’d finished Snow White; everybody got too drunk and ended up sleeping with the wrong spouse. The next morning was a bit of a fright and perhaps this had been done before but never mind, the old crew “kicked it” and the next morning they paid!

The Circle had become larger still; measuring 8 kilometers wide and 14 meters tall. It was black hole in the sea and it was drawing in all the water around it. NASA was in a frenzy, as were the other government agencies around the world. There were endless discussions between these groups but no-one knew what to do about this phenomena. The defense organizations of world had been stalemated.

After the Circle and it’s cause had been discovered the defense agencies agreed that their only hope was to use ICBM’s to rid the world of this malevolence. They launched twenty missiles at the apex of the aliens orbit. All systems were on alert. The tracking systems on that side of the world were watching what would prove to be the largest explosion ever experienced. Ten seconds after the missiles were to have impacted nothing had happened. They were trackable for sixty seconds after they were to have exploded. Nothing! Then the missiles just seemed to disappear! The tracking screens showed twenty bleeps racing toward the intersection point of the aliens orbits. The technicians and military hierarchy were knitting their brows into a large sweater wondering if their plan would work or would it be the beginning of the end. Would the aliens retaliate? It was a dire situation in “control rooms” around the world.

The UFO, in full anticipation of this inevitability, were calmly going about their business. They de-activated the missiles as soon as they left the Earth’s atmosphere, reduced to scrap metal long before they reached their intended targets. It was a laughable attempt on the part of the military organizations of Earth as well as being entirely predictable. The UFO vaporized the objects a full minute after they were to have impacted and they all had a big laugh. The “primitives” made a similar attempt the very next day and their efforts were met with the same outcome. It was a lamentable indication of the nature of human endeavor from the UFO’s point of view but not one that was going to keep them from following through with their plan.

After these two attempts there was nothing left for the governments of the world to do but announce the existence of the Circle and it’s course and likely effects on humanity. For the controlling natures of these officials, this was a very dark day indeed. They’d tried everything including blowing their problem to kingdom come and nothing worked. It was an undeniable problem and completely out of their control. They would have to wait and see what would happen next and it was not something they, as a group, they were used to doing. They had held the reins of the human population for so long and had managed to attach themselves firmly around the imaginations of their constituents that there was no recourse for them but to follow. This was their day of reckoning!

Guillermo and Illiana went on about their business, both trying to ignore something that had become impossible to ignore. The re-occurring dream that Illiana was having had taken on all the characteristics of an incurable disease who’s course could not be predicted. The night after the radio program and the subsequent discussion at Charlie’s house seemed to be a turning point and that evening Guillermo and Illiana discussed leaving the city, if for no other reason than Illiana’s sanity. They thought of moving back to Mexico City or one of the thousands of suburbs that surround that sprawl of humanity. When the fact of the impending disaster became common knowledge it made their decision for them! The only question left was where in the world to go.

Charlie and Rebecca too began to discuss travel plans. For two days they mulled over where they could go. Al had become a problem and he was bringing it home with him. For his part, he knew it was time to go. The entire time that Al had been in PEN he was in some sort of flux and he and Charlie really hadn’t had time to re-kindle their relationship. As Grand Master Flash sang, “..there was something on his mind and he just couldn’t shake it!” Charlie felt sorry for him, but, as so often is the case with someone that has a problem, there is little one can do to help till the person who needs the help asks for it.

The fact of the matter was that Al didn’t have a problem per se. He was struggling with the things that he knew and there was far too much information. In addition to that problem, there was the issue of Al’s struggle with facts and what he’d been taught to believe against what he suspected might be closer to the truth. A struggle that he could not share, it was quantity he had to measure in himself as well as something he had to weigh the credibility’s of. Strange that he should end up where he started. The looming uncertainty of change was knocking on Al’s door. He wasn’t so pent by the “secrets” and their drama. There was something that was perfect about his trip through uncertainty.

Mr. Brown and Vatea were never far from his thoughts, yet he hadn’t shared that fact with anyone except of course Conrado. Conrado and he had gone fishing several time over the two years that Al was living in the city but he never brought up Vatea or Mr. Brown. It seemed that Al was under a cloud and even though Conrado never brought the subject up, he felt that Al had been stung by that episode. It was a difficult area for Al and one better left alone.

The evening after the “secrets” visit to Charlie’s Al stayed home for a change. It seemed rather foolish for him to wander out while his freedom was in uncertain jeopardy. He went to sleep early and dreamt. It was his sweating that woke him up and the dream that visited him remained in his mind in frightening clarity. The nature of dreams for Al had been changing for some seven years. He had learnt that they were something that could be informational, psychic, and now, with the radio program revealing to him that many people were having the same dream, possibly networked somehow. It was a definition that he’d learned to accept even expect change in.

The dream consisted of two very distinct parts; the first part concerned itself with breathing under water. He saw himself gliding under water for an undetermined amount of time and the striking aspect of the dream was that he didn’t feel he had to surface. The second part of the dream was of Vatea. She was standing on the boat with a child in her arms and she was calling to Al to come along. In the dream, he was on the beach in the city of dreams and he walked into the water and swam beneath the waves till he was under the boat and that’s when he woke up! He walked out to the pool and sat down to think. He was troubled. The images were powerful and crystal clear. Too many dreams that he’d had over the years had bore themselves out for him to regard these as nothing more than “night time entertainment” and the dreams of others were hauntingly suspect as well. There was indeed something looming on the horizon and it was sure to be the circle. “The Circle never ends!” Al recalled the dreams he’d had when Puerto was just a surfer beach and since then so much had happened. The night before, in his moment of lucidity, it all seemed clear to him what he had to do but now, since the dreams of others had been told to him, it occurred to him that what he was supposed to do had already been done. Al looked at the coin that hung round his neck and wondered how much of what was real that he didn’t know. He had spent the better part of two years trying to forget what he’d shared with Vatea. It was something that he’d never experienced before and he’d convinced himself that he’d never experience anything like it again. Then the image of the child rushed into his mind! He searched his memory to bring the image into sharper focus. Slowly the face of the child pierced through his memory and he shuttered to believe it. It must be his son. The child of a new world! His son! He felt the excitement of the revelation; did he and Vatea make a son and were they waiting for him? He wanted to go to Roca Blanca, or Starbuck. He was about to take his first step in a search for his young family and he felt strongly that he would reach the end of that journey very soon! A day later the news of the Almera Circle hit the air waves.

Things look like they were pretty much written in stone

but that is not the nature of the universe, as any self respecting rock will tell you if you have the patients. Intresting that human beings were making everything from silicon chips to solar panels with the likes of rocks but still they considered their intelligence static. Relativity can be such a slippery subject! Puerto Escondido National appeared to be on the Izarian “hit list. They weren’t sure what the total impact of their actions would be regarding the planet but they knew it would be negligible weighed against what humankind had been busying themselves with. Jud and Re- arrived just two days before the information about the circle became common knowledge and when it did, all hell broke loose. First the banks of the city were hit. Vaults were emptying faster than a dump truck full of those little styrofoam packing balls, speeding down a valley road in a high wind. The day after the announcement empty planes were landing at the airport and space in them leaving had become extravagantly dear. The patrols at the borders of the city were normally manned by uniformed “partners” but after the announcement they drove, to work, through the border and kept right on going. The dam had breached and it was a scramble. All services had come to a screeching halt in the city. You couldn’t buy anything, you couldn’t sell anything and you couldn’t find anyone. If they hadn’t already left, they were packing frantically. The only business that was still booming were the travel agencies and they were doing better than they’d ever dreamt possible!

Jud and Re-Fried sat in their penthouse flat at the top of the near deserted government operated hotel watching the story unfold. As they flipped through the channels, every station was covering the story. The circle was awe inspiring, covering 10 kilometers of ocean and fluctuating between 13 and 22 meters high. There was twenty-four hour television coverage of the wave as it made it’s way north. Watching it on TV, you could see all the planes and helicopters that were covering the spectacle, often blocking the view of the coverage you were watching. It was being broadcast on fifty percent of the channels. The rest of the television programming was filled with interviews with meteorologist speculating on the cause of a new weather pattern and how it might react when it hit the land mass, coverage of the evacuation of the western coast of Southern Mexico, politicians from around the world pledging their support, and a couple religious programs predicting the approach of the “Second Coming.” The Mexican Army had been called in. There was a “General State of Emergency” declared from Costa Rica to Baja California. The fervor was gaining momentum. The world was bracing for a catastrophe from the comfort of their living rooms with a cold drink in one hand and the remote in the other. Jud and Re-Fried found themselves alone, with the exception of a few flies that had wandered into their soon to be deserted “City of Dreams. ”There was a commentator who innocently made the sage remark, and I quote, “...everything that can be done is being done,” which in this case was nothing more than get the hell out of the way!

People from around the world were all dutifully sitting in front of their TV’s watching the story unfold between McDonald’s commercials and political campaign ploys that seem to dominate television programming. There was a great deal of drivel surrounding the phoneme and the TV producers were making the best of it. TV; a weapon that we do not have the time to discuss. Pity because TV is such a powerful advisory, claiming by default the attention and devotion of so many otherwise focused intellects.

A little closer to home at Charlie’s house the TV was on but no one was watching it. They were packing! He had made arrangements for a private jet to pick up everyone. There was a full twenty-four hours till the circle was to impact. Everyone was busing themselves with packing the things they wanted to take and things they did not want to lose. Everyone was very focused on what they were doing. Guillermo and Illiana were there. They had packed their things the day the news came over the television.

Rebecca saw it first. There was “her wave” on television! There it was! It was collapsing now and then, taking on the aspect of a sort of freak wave from pre-historic times. She felt chilled and elated. She watched it for a full two minutes before she could speak. She screamed out “come everyone, come right now!” First Illiana came into the room. She found Rebecca standing in front of the TV with the remote hanging limply in her hand, staring with her mouth agape. Illiana looked at the TV and screamed. It was one of those blood curdling screams that Alfred Hitchcock spent his whole life searching for, and that brought Charlie runnin’! Al came too and the four adults stood before the “electric brain sponge” and stared. Each one saw the same thing and the disbelief hung to the air like the realism of a childhood fantasy. Time might have stood still. The wave roared on, inching ever northward. The four of them stared, and as they looked at the image, ideas that they had clung to for all of their lives melted away, dreams came true and castles crumbled. Santa Claus and the Wizard of Oz could have been standing there with them, lying a gentle hand on their shoulders and saying, “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.” The four of them stood there for a long time, watching. The voice of the commentator was drowned out by, muffled by each of their minds thoughts. They were shaken back to the living room by an announcement from the Mexican government. “This un-explained phenomena is headed for the City of Puerto Escondido National and would make landfall late in the morning of April 1st! A general state of emergency has been declared. All residents of that area are instructed to evacuate the area.”

The phone rang and jolted them all back. Illiana answered it and it was Guillermo asking if she had heard the news? A frenzy insued! Plans that were merely the subject for discussion a half hour ago had been bumped to the status of “definite!” Charlie took control of the situation straight away. He made a call to the States and arranged to have his family and friends transported to San Francisco. A half hour later Guillermo had picked up Illiana and took her home to pack. The whirlwind had struck! Rebecca set about the preparation for their journey.

Al just sat down in front of the “idiot box” and watched. He flipped through the channels, watching the wave from different perspectives. His thoughts were transported back to the orb and the story he found there about Nez and Diphues. He thought, this must be what that wave was like. He was paralyzed by it, hypnotized. The house was a bustle round him but he took no notice. He just sat there, staring at the screen, watching and thinking. The gig was up! It was time for action but he seemed to be glued to the couch. He wasn’t quite sure what to do next. The coverage of the circle was comprehensive. The news networks of the world were everywhere along the coast of southern Mexico, covering the reaction of the people in the area to the news. Al sat and watched for a long while. There were interviews with officials and residents of various beach towns north of the circle. There was a great exodus afoot. Harbor towns were attempting to save what they could and get out.

Al sat there the rest of the day and all night, watching the coverage. He hadn’t thought about himself or what he was going to do. He was waiting for something. Not only didn’t he know what he was waiting for, he didn’t know he was waiting at all. His mind was absorbed with the TV. He watched as the Circle drew the water into itself, like the receding tide before a tsunami, revealing the bottom of harbors and the mountains of endless rubbish that had been thrown there by humankind. He saw the debris left by citizens of deserted cities. He witnessed the ugliness of what had become human existence against the backdrop of a worn out and mis-used natural world.

Finally he saw something that dissolved the glue that had kept his ass stuck to the couch. In a particular sequence of the harbor of Salina Cruz, where hundreds of fisherman and other boaters were in the process of trying to get their boats to safety he saw Mr. Brown’s boat! It was sailing north. A helicopter was filming the evacuating vessels of the area and there she was, making way towards PEN!

He picked up the phone and called Conrado. The phone rang and rang. Finally Conrado’s mother picked up the line. She sounded rushed. Conrado was helping to pack up the house. Then he was going to try to get his boats out of harms way. She said he would be at the wharf in about two hours. Al got him on the line and asked him where he was going to take the boats. Conrado wasn’t sure where it would be safe but he was going north as long as it would take to save them. Al told him he needed a ride north and would be happy to help him move the boats. Conrado said he would meet him at the wharf. Al was up, with his day pack and his lap top (which besides his bank pass book was all he owned) and out on the beach.

By now the news was a day old. The beach was deserted. The carnival had been called off and all the clowns were packing up their make up and going home. The silence was broken now and then by a speeding taxi, loaded with luggage and racing away from Mother Natures wrath! Wandering down the beach for his appointment with Conrado, Al was lost in his own anticipation. He was a spectator. This was not of his making and he felt like an illegal alien who is trying to give the slip to immigration. The hotels were in a frenzy with tourist checking out and speeding to the airport. There was a guilty look about the faces of these refugees. There were people who were clearly used to condensation, arguing over transportation with other people who were equally out of their element. Theirs was a world of obsequious ass kissers and, hidden beneath their silk underwear were the lip marks of the less fortunate, people who had been maligned and scorned because of their meager lot in life. The caste system of money makes the Hindu farce look like plankton amongst the feeding whales! He watched as a hotel bus full of angry millionaires, all loaded in and ready to go, as their driver, (a partner with a family) jumped out of the driver seat of the running vehicle and into his families car that had pulled beside them all packed and ready to go and drive away!

On the Penthouse level of the Presendente Hotel Jud had just hung up the phone. He’d made arrangements for a helicopter to pick them up the following day. Re- was looking at some aerial footage of a harbor after the water had all been drawn out by the circle. There was so much trash on the bottom of that bay it looked like the New York City dump. The commentator was complaining on how horrid the smell was. I contend that water was not put on this planet to mask unpleasant smells or to bury out of sight un-wanted and discarded objects de jour. The sea had subsided 12 meters below the record low tide. Boats that had not been moved were laying amongst the trash and rubble like forgotten children’s toys that had been tossed in the bin. The floating docks lay on the bottom, tangled with boat masts and wires, sometimes bent in two by an abandoned boat that had long since sunk and settled beneath it. There were freighters that were unable to leave, lying toppled and half submerged in the muck. Re- opened another beer and walked to the balcony where Jud was standing, looking out over the City of Dreams. Below, on the strand Al Fwada looked up and could see the two men standing there. Jud said to Re-, “look at that man down there, walking, I wonder where he thinks he’s going?” The two men laughed as they watched Al wander down the umbrella lined beach toward the wharf.

Most of the boats that were going to be moved out of harms way were gone. Besides Conrado’s boats there couldn’t have been more than 12 others. Al was there for five minutes or so when Conrado came racing up in his little truck. He had every gas can he could find loaded in the back along with a few dozen plastic containers with gas in them too! He came to a screeching halt, jumped out of the truck and started unloading the containers into one of his boats. Al helped in silence and they were done in a short while. Conrado told Al he would be back as soon as he could drop off his truck for his family. They were going to drive to Oaxaca City where he would be able to contact them after the disaster was over. There was a mountain of gear to load and Al volunteered to take care of it while Conrado was gone. He sped away!

Al loaded the boats, dividing the weight equally. He kept thinking about Vatea and his chances of running into her. It was shoe in! Everything he’d dreamt had come to pass and he was surrounded by people who were in the same boat. He was excited about his future. He was doing quite well considering how easily he regressed into abjection. He waited. The minutes drooled by like molasses on a cold day. He waited. The tide was lower than he’d ever seen it. It seemed the bay was slowly emptying. He watched the water ebb. He thought of Otis Reading. He waited. Suddenly Conrado came barreling down the wharf on his motor scooter. He and Al loaded the bike into the last boat. Then they tied the four boats together in pairs with the full boat astern. Conrado told Al to follow in his wake and they’d stop in Chacahua to re-fuel and check the progress of the Circle. So off they went.

A plane landed at the Airport. It was an American Charter plane that Charlie had arranged to pick up his entourage. Charlie had his van loaded with everything it could carry. Illiana, Guillermo, their two sons and Rebecca were sitting in the taxi. The motor was running. when they realized the Al was not a part of the group. Charlie had put the plane on hold until further notice. The airport was very busy and so their flight was taken off the schedule for take off status. The crew was assigned a hangar and was waiting nervously there. The six of them searched the house, called everyone they knew. They waited. They discussed the possibilities of where Al might have gone which led into another whirlwind of searches that found Guillermo driving to all the bars and cantinas that Al was known to have frequented and Charlie running in to find the place vacant. The boarders were all abandoned. There was little traffic save the lone highballer, racing to escape the City of Dreams. No Al! They returned to find the two women calling everyone in town. Guillermo went to drive to the wharf to check there and Charlie went to Al’s pool house to search there again. He walked into the room. He stood there for a minute. Just stood there and felt the man who had lived there for the past two years; passed out there, wrote there, dreamt there. He knew suddenly that Al had gone! He walked over to the phone and made all the arrangements and then called Guillermo to tell him his suspicion.

Guillermo got to the harbor quickly. There was no traffic at all. The wharf was deserted when he got there. It looked like the house that college kids rent and they all end up quitting school. Soon the money stops coming from home and they all get evicted so they leave the building with an expression of that very feeling; evicted! Al wasn’t here. He turned the car around and the phone rang. Guillermo stopped the car and answered the phone. Out to sea he spied four boats speeding north, one behind the other. It was Charlie. He figured that Al was gone. Where was anybody’s guess. Charlie sat there for a few minutes, thinking about his old friend, Al Fwada. He walked back into the house to find that Illiana finally got and answer at Conrado’s house and found that Al had met Conrado down at the wharf to help him move the boats to safety. Charlie called and made arrangements to meet Conrado’s family at the airport so they wouldn’t have to drive. They were scheduled to leave at 9:30 the next morning

Conrado and Al made their way to Chacahua hurriedly. They arrived to find the little bay there packed with boats of all sorts, mostly owned by fisherman much like Conrado. They found anchorage for the four boats and then went ashore. There were hoards of people crowding the little cantina on the beach. They were all riveted to the television and whispering quietly to themselves. Conrado called home but there was no answer so he sat down to watch TV while Al began to filter through the crowd to see if anyone had seen a boat like the one Vatea was sailing in. He talked to fifty people or more. A few of them remembered passing such a boat and they told Al that it was heading there way when they’d last seen it. He was hopeful but still anxious.

He and Conrado talked about what they should do next. The circle was to make landfall the following day so they decided to spend the night here and access the situation in the morning. They ate. The sun set and they made there way back to the boats for the night. It was dark night. The stars littered the sky. The boats lapped and sang their song against the tides. Now and then one of the refugees would start up their boat and motor out of the bay. Al fell off to sleep.

Dannaos had been sleeping since they passed PEN. Vatea sailed on. She had been in contact with the U.F.O. during the whole Almera Project. They knew where Al was and Vatea was on her way. It was time for them to get back together and bring up Dannaos. There were big doings looming in both their futures. She just missed him leaving Puerto with Conrado by a hour but she knew where he was the whole time. That blasted coin was leading a double life as a homing device and the Izarians were able to keep track of where he was at whim. She sailed into the bay at Chacahua in the middle of the night. She anchored outside the cluster of boats. She knew Al was there but the morning would be soon enough for their reunion. She fed Dannaos and fell asleep in her hammock.

Al woke in the early morning. The sun had yet to rise but he could not sleep any longer. He felt urgent, that he was supposed to be doing something or had forgotten something but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. He looked around the bay at all the refugees, sleeping in their boats with everything they owned. As he scanned the bay he saw Mr. Brown’s boat! His heart leapt in his chest and he was in the water and swimming. It was a long swim to the other side of the bay but he didn’t care. His search was about to end and he was filled with strength. He sidled next to the boat and all was silent save the sound of his breathing and the lapping of the sea against the hull. He climbed on board. There was the child, sleeping in his hammock next to his mother’s. The boys eyes were open and he looked at Al as if to say, “hello, you must be Dad.” Al picked him up and held him in his arms. His dreams were coming true with every waking moment, a bit different from their original content but taking shape in reality nonetheless. Al stood there, with Dannaos in his arms and looked at Vatea sleeping. He was soaring. He was home!

Al stood there for the best part of an hour, playing with his son and glancing at Vatea now and again. It at finding this women again. He imagined that he had slipped back into the world of discovery! Safety was a emotion he could operate within. He felt at home. The cave man returns for his next lesson. This was a time of quiet reflection mixed with the silent explosions of his excitement. Vatea woke just before sunrise. She opened her eyes and there was Al Fwada, standing above her with Dannaos in his arms. She smiled and a tear rolled down her cheek. Al leaned down and the two of them held each other for a long while with the boy between. They did not speak. Vatea got out of her hammock and they walked to the rail and watched the sunrise over the mountain. The silence was broken when Al asked he what was his son’s name. Vatea replied, “Dannaos, after the pre-dynastic Egyptian who spread the news of our arrival on this planet to the Africans.” Al laughed, “I guess there’s still a great deal I’ve yet to learn Vatea.”

Conrado woke with the chickens as usual. The boats were tied up side by side and he found Al gone. It wasn’t long before he saw Mr. Brown’s boat and realized where he was. He motored over to the hulk and gave the whistle. The three of them came to the side of the boat and greeted Conrado on board. It was a grand re-union between the three old friends. Vatea told them about the U.F.O.’s plan to restore Puerto to it’s original form and how they would depart as soon as it was finished. She told Conrado that all would be safe before mid day. They decided to go to the beach and watch the spectacle on TV.

The Circle was due to make landfall at 11:00 AM on the morning of April fools day. They might call it Human Nature Day. It had grown up a bit as it moved north. The land diverges the sea from the south east and Circle was moving directly north. Puerto Escondido National. It was no longer the hidden port as its name implies. It had become a target, a monument, it was to be a sacrificial example, plunged into geological martyrdom; all for a lost cause.
Due south of Puerto was nothing but sea till you got to Antarctica. Why you’d be lucky to even see an island with a course like that. As the Circle moved north, it drew the water from the land like a thief. The further north it traveled, the more naked the shoreline became. As it moved north it had become much larger and much taller. It oscillated; wider and flatter, then taller and more concentric. From above it looked like the retina of an eye that was opening and closing with the presence of light.

The previous night was a festive one at the El Presedente. Jud and Re- and a small but elite group of poiticos gathered in a state room in the penthouse and had a poker game. They drank copious amounts of liquor and ate the chiefs best. There were painfully beautiful women there, languishing and distant, there for a price. The men played both games that night. The next afternoon both the men were suffering from a mild case of alcohol poisoning. They called room service and ordered breakfast and a little “hair of the dog.” It was around 3PM when they finally got around to checking their travel arrangements. Jud picked up the phone and got through to the airport to check the status of the helicopter. No-one knew anything about a helicopter for them but the man on the other side of the line said he would get right on it. The two men were too hung over to get anxious about the situation, and while watching an old movie, fell asleep again.

The man at the Airport made the necessary arrangements for the sleeping beauracrats. He called back with the necessary information. The phone rang off the hook. Both Jud and Re-Fried slept right through the call. Since the helicopter was already on the way from Oaxaca City, when it landed at the airport in Puerto tower control put it in a hangar. There was just two other planes there, the ground crews Piper Cub and Charlie’s charter plane.

Charlie woke up first and called to confirm that his charter would be ready for take-off. 9:30. That was the scheduled departure and the were to be there an hour early. He called Conrado’s family and told them to meet his group outside the front gate of the airport at 8:00. The six of them sat and had breakfast, most of which was ignored till it got cold and was thrown in the bin. They all waited for the little hand to reach the right positions on the clock so they could leave. They watched the circle. It was less than 30 miles away! It was an awesome sight. Frightening! They loaded themselves into the respective vehicles and set off for the airport. There they met with Conrado’s family and they all made there way through the throng of last few flights out of the city. They loaded their belongings into the plane and the plane left the hangar for the runway. It was 9:15. Twenty minutes later they were in the air, banking left and over the Circle. All of them were looking out the window at the spectacle. It was a terrifying sight, a natural power unleashed that none of them had never before imagined except in some of their dreams. The pilot banked the plane away and toward Oaxaca City.

An hour later Jud woke up and looked at the clock. It said 10:15! He was dis-oriented. He wasn’t sure what day it was but since the sun was up, it must be the morning. He went to the phone. There was a light on it and it was flashing on and off. He must have slept through the ringing. He called for his messages to the front desk of the hotel. No-one answered. He looked at the TV. The Circle had not changed course or speed and it was expected to make landfall in less than an hour. Jud shook Re-Fried awake. Then he called the airport about his helicopter. The man at the other end said he’d called but no-one answered. He thought they’d left already. There was a great deal of yelling on Jud’s end of the line and the man at the airport said he would have the helicopter in the air and on the way in ten minutes.

The two men didn’t have to watch the Circle on TV any longer. The TV coverage revealed to them that the Circle was right on their doorstep. They could see their hotel on TV! There was the Circle and there was the hotel in the background. From their vantage point they could see the top of the funnel and the dozen or so film crews flying around above it. They were terrified. They were in very serious trouble. Re-fried called the airport again but there was no answer. The two men gathered their things together and ran to the stairwell and up to the roof of the building. Here their view was much better and the circle loomed on the horizon, edging closer, getting larger with every passing minute. They searched the sky for a sign of their escape. Nothing, and behind them the Circle edged ever closer! It was about to hit the point at the south end of town. Both men stood shock still and watched as it touched the ramparts of their impenetrable sea wall. They were expecting a splashing torrent at the wave struck the wall but it didn’t happen that way. Instead the wall just seemed to disappear, bit by bit. The circle seemed to slow down a bit. Not stop but just reduce it’s speed. It moved slowly in towards the land, consuming all it came in contact with. There was no debris, no flying building materials, no smashing of the boats that were left at the wharf. They all just simply were gone! Bit by bit the sea wall vanished and the Circle edged ever closer. Jud and Re-Fried were in a panic. They looked skyward and there in the distance was a helicopter heading their way. The Circle was a kilometer away. The helicopter was a kilometer away. The Circle hit land at the other end of the beach. Half the sea wall was gone. There was no tangled mess that is left by most disasters. There was nothing! When the Circle hit the first building, it too began to vanish. As if it were merely a drawing and it was being erased. One hotel, two hotels, then four. The Circle was making it’s way towards the El Presendente. The helicopter landed on the roof. Jud and Re-Fried scrambled to the door and flung themselves inside. The pilot was not too thrilled with being in this situation. He was watching the same thing that Jud and Re-Fried were. He manipulated the controls and they were airborne. The Circle was two buildings away. It consumed both and then the three men, as they quickly flew out of harms way watched as the roof they were standing on, indeed the entire building vanished into thin air!

By the time the Circle reached Puerto the television coverage of the Circle had dramatically thinned out and when the city began to slowly vanish before the eyes of the camera crew and the world at home many of the adventurous film crews decided to call it a day. Still there were a few planes and helicopters in the air filming and the world watched as the entire city of Puerto Escondido National was “disappeared!” It took an hour. When the entire city was gone the wave collapsed on the land and the water it was made of began to return to the sea. What was left was nothing! There was no rubble, no twisted foundations. Not a sign that the city had ever been there, in fact, it looked like no human being had ever been there! The world looked on. NASA looked on. The world had been changed. It was unforgettable in a very short term sense, as most “natural disasters” are. What happened next lent itself to a little more longevity!

CHANGE IS GRANTED ASYLUM

Across the world television transmission was about to be hijacked, priviateered or otherwise, seized! Computer monitors received the message. NASA and other scientific organizations received the transmission. Military headquarters all over the world found themselves reading the letter, each in their own language. Where ever technology exceeded human reason the message was received and there was an unannounced moment of silence the world over.

“THE FOLLOWING IS A MESSAGE FROM THE UNITED FEDERATION of OZMANDIA.”

“The recent event that you have all witnessed today was a clean up operation, executed by our federation. This small area has been returned to it’s natural condition for the benefit of the other creatures that share this planet with you and as an example to you. This is not your planet anymore than the sea belongs to the biggest fish there. It is an organism in and of itself. You, as human beings have become a malignancy in your unchecked manipulation and deliberate destruction of this organism. The continuance of your behavior will result in termination of your experiment.”

U.F.O.

The message remained on the screen for a full hour. It could not be turned off or unplugged. It was on every TV screen and computer monitor the world over. It was on every channel. In addition, it was being broadcast over the radio. It was a message from another planet. Aliens! And they were watching. It was clear!

The military organizations of the world could not communicate with each other during this hour and when their screens normal function was returned to them, the spacecraft of the U.F.O. were gone! They wanted to attack. They wanted to blast them, vaporize them. They wanted to remain the biggest fish in the pond but what had been pointed out to them was that they were not! They were ever so frustrated. Luckily they were not the only group that watched the transmission. People all over the world were watching or listening. The denied suspicions of the masses had been revealed! There were indeed visitors from other planets and they were not the dangerous and unfriendly creatures that they had been made out to be. They also expressed a nurturing character for a planet that the created systems of civilization had allotted second consideration. The U.F.O. gave that consideration first place as well as making a concrete demonstration of the fact that the war toys of humankind were nothing more than toys. It wasn’t information that was generally distributed but the knowledge would have a profound effect on future policies and programs mounted by all the governments of the world.

Jud and Re-Fried saw it first hand and it was to be a turning point in both their careers! It was clear to them what the aliens were saying. They witnessed first hand the power and focus of these un-seen beings. The rest of their lives would be spent turning Mexico into the leading Eco-sensitive nation. They would build no more cities. On the contrary, they would spend the rest of their days dismantling, re-designing and otherwise, re-thinking the approach of government on a no longer defenseless planet and by the end of their careers, would take Mexico and especially Mexico City from the industrial wasteland that it had become to a model for the rest of the world. They would become hero’s, architects of a new world. Even the Izarians were surprised at how effectively their plan had worked in respect to them!

Twenty years had passed since the U.F.O. gave their little demonstration. The world had changed dramatically! There were still great issues to confront but the nature of human kind’s approach to those issues had become somewhat more humble. There was a marked absences of arrogance in the worlds governments and they began to work together toward more friendly and positive goals. They were surprised at how much energy and resources they had when they started using it for nurturing goals. Their technology had increased in leaps and bounds in the past twenty years. They’d developed solar energy to a point where oil became nothing more than a nasty chapter in their past. There were few conflicts and these were mostly only over which program would best serve to strengthen the planets Eco-systems. They collaborated on a space program in an endeavor to find the U.F.O. and see if they could learn anything that would help them in their quest. On one of their first missions they sent a space probe towards the star Tau Ceta. There were cameras on board that transmitted information back to Earth. As the probe made it’s way through the Asteroid Belt there was some very intresting footage that was recorded and distributed round the world. Seems there was some debris circling as a part of the belt that hadn’t been there long. It was all very funny in hind sight and all the people that saw it had to laugh and sigh at how far they had come since that debris found itself in space. One clip that lasted for a little over thirty seconds was of a sign, plummeting through space amongst ancient rocks of the belt. It read, “Welcome to PUERTO ESCONDIDO NATIONAL!”

MR. BROWN’S LIBRARY